Abstract
Shell and tube heat exchangers [STHE] play a very vital role in energy conversion systems, process industries like chemical, pharmaceutical, refineries etc. and in different power plants. For designing shell and tube heat exchangers, the tubes vibrational response (internally) to any random excitations of fluid flow need to be understandable. Also, circumferential inlet pipe or tube at the entrance region of the shell side, generally subject to the fluid thrust in the bends of typical pipe arrangements. It produces loadings forces and moments, leading to unavoidable vibrations. The goal of vibration analysis is to ensure that fatigue damage or fretting wear does not occur, as well as, predicted frequencies, amplitudes shall be within acceptable limits criteria. This paper reports the vibration analysis of different piping arrangement of different end conditions to understand its effects on frequencies and modes so that a designer must mitigate it, at the initial stage. Axial, lateral and torsional vibrations are analyzed for different end conditions. The boundary conditions used are both ends fixed, one end fixed and other end free, both ends free and one end fixed-other end attached to a weight. Analytical procedure is carried out to determine the frequencies for axial, lateral and torsional cases. FEA analysis and experiment using an FFT analyzer is carried out to check the convergence of the results. Very useful results are established which generates the philosophy to protect the pipings from the resonant frequencies subjected to different end conditions.