Failure analysis of Shell and tube

Heat Exchangers

Raj Kulsange
MIS no.:121524006
Under Guidance of:
Dr. S. B. Patil

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Introduction of Heat Exchangers

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Definition of Heat Exchanger:

Hot Fluid

Cold Fluid

with maximum rate and minimum investment and running cost

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 Shell and Tube HE:

• It is a class of heat exchanger designs.

• Most common type of heat exchanger in oil
refineries and other large chemical processes,
and is suited for higher pressure applications.
• It consists of a shell (a large pressure vessel)
with a bundle of tubes inside it.
• There can be many variations on the shell and
tube design. Eg. U-tube

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Components of Heat Exchangers:

Station Mov
ary ing
head head

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Types of Heat Exchangers

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NATURE OF HEAT EXCHANGE PROCESS

Direct
contact

Indirect • Regenerators
contact • Recuperators

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Relative Direction of fluid motion
•oil coolers
Parallel •oil heaters
flow
•water heaters

Counter Maximum rate of

flow heat transfer for a
given surface area

Cross • Automobile
flow radiator

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Relative Direction of fluid motion
•oil coolers
Parallel •oil heaters
flow
•water heaters

Counter Maximum rate of

flow heat transfer for a
given surface area

Cross • Automobile
flow radiator

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Relative Direction of fluid motion
•oil coolers
Parallel •oil heaters
flow
•water heaters

Counter Maximum rate of

flow heat transfer for a
given surface area

Cross • Automobile
flow radiator

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DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTIONAL
FEATURES
Concentric
Tubes
Shell and
Tube

Multiple Shell
and Tube
Pass

Compact
Heat
Exchanger

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PHYSICAL STATE OF FLUIDS

Condenser

Evaporators

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Failures in Heat exchangers

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Operation problem in Heat exchanger

Structural • Failures caused by flow induced vibration

Problems • Leakage from bolted joints

Performance • The excessive tube fouling

• Thermal stresses in the internal of the heat
Problems exchanger

Metallurgical • Stress corrosion, galvanic corrosion, and

erosion
problems
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 Fouling in Heat Exchangers

In a heat exchanger during normal operations the tube

surface gets covered by deposits of ash, soot, and dirt and
scale etc

This can be reduced by using clean system.

By modifying design of heat exchanger.
By treatment of process system

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Stress corrosion cracking

Environment

Stress
Corrosion Tensile
Cracking Stress
Susceptible
Material

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 Stress corrosion cracking
It can occur without an
externally applied load or
at loads significantly below
yield stress

catastrophic failure can

occur without significant
Pitting is commonly associated with deformation or obvious
stress corrosion cracking deterioration of the
phenomenon. component
Aluminum and stainless steel are
more susceptible for scc
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 Wear failures
Defined as damage to a
solid surface caused by the
removal or displacement of
material by the mechanical
action of a contacting solid,
liquid, or gas.

Damage is usually thought

Types: of as gradual deterioration
1. Adhesive wear
2. Abrasive wear
3. Erosive wear

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 Fatigue failures
Metal fatigue is caused by
repeated cycling of the load

Metal fatigue cracks

initiate and propagate in
regions where the strain is
most severe.
Three stages…

crack Progressive Catastrophic

initiation crack growth failure

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 Fatigue failures
Stress ratio = σmin
σmax

•If the stresses are fully reversed, then R = -1.

•If the stresses are partially reversed, R = a negative number less
than 1.
•If the stress is cycled between a maximum stress and no load, R =
zero
•If the stress is cycled between two tensile stresses, R = a positive
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number less than 1.
 Creep in metals

High temperature
progressive
deformation of a
material at constant
stress is called
creep

In a creep test a constant load is applied to a tensile

specimen maintained at a constant temperature. Strain is
then measured over a period of time

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 Corrosive Failures
•Corrosion is chemically induced damage to a material that
results in deterioration of the material and its properties

• Following factors should be considered during a failure analysis

to determine the affect corrosion played in a failure:
1. Type of corrosion
2. Corrosion rate
3. The extent of the corrosion
4. Interaction between corrosion and other failure mechanisms

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 Corrosive Failures
Pitting Corrosion:
1. Localized form of corrosive attack.
2. Formation of holes or pits on the metal surface.
3. Measured by weight loss.
4. The rate of penetration may be 10 to 100 times that by
general corrosion.

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 Causes of failures
1. Vibrations:
1. The vortex shedding frequency of the fluid in cross flow
over the tubes may coincide with a natural frequency of tube
and excite large resonant vibration amplitudes.
2. When a critical velocity of fluid exceed and the vibration then
become self exited and grows in amplitude. This is known as
fluid elastic coupling.
3. Turbulent pressure fluctuations provide a potential
mechanism for tube vibration

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 Causes of failures
2. Corrosion
3. Over heating of tubes
4. Tube breaking: The corrosion and erosion in the tube can
cause tube brakeage
5. Fracture in weld portion: The clearance between the shell
and tube bundle can cause vibration in the tube bundle. This
causes the fracture formation in the tube sheet.
6. Tube bending: The clearance between the shell and tube and
overheating can cause the bending of tubes.

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Analysis of failures of Heat
Exchangers

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 Checking design from heat transfer
point of view
Aim is to find out area required for the heat transfer….

HOW TO CALCULATE…?

Heat Q = U* A*LMTD
Transfer
rate

Overall
Heat
Transfer Area required for
coefficient heat transfer

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 Checking design from heat transfer
point of view
To find LMTD….

For The multi pass cross flow

heat exchangers

Correction
Factor can be
found from data
book

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 Checking design from heat transfer
point of view
To find overall heat transfer coefficient….

ho and hi can be find out by relations…

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 Checking design from heat transfer
point of view
To find overall heat transfer coefficient….

ho and hi can be find out by relations…

Nu = 0.53(Gr*Pr) 0.25

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 Checking design from heat transfer
point of view
To find heat transfer rate Q….

And choose maximum value between them and

consider it as Q

By substituting all above value in initial equation we will get value

of Area required for heat transfer…

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 Checking design from heat transfer
point of view
Now calculate actual area A’ of tube….

Actual area =A’=3.14*do*L

Now check whether….

Actual area (A’) > area required for the heat transfer (A)

• Design is safe
If yes
• Either change design
If no parameters or change the
material
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 Improving life of tubes from fracture mechanics point
of view and reducing induced vibrations

Background…
1. The stresses in the heat exchanger tubes are mostly created by
water pressure flowing inside the tubes and vapor pressure of
the input/output steam/condensed in the entrance/exit areas.
2. Because of the high speed of the entrance steam during
entering into heaters, it can create vibration bending stresses
in the tubes located in the entrance area.
3. Fracture mechanics analysis including the fatigue crack
growth behavior can be used to predict the amount of bending
stress on the tubes in service

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Improving life of tubes from fracture mechanics point
of view and reducing induced vibrations
•Crack growth curve is known as
Paris law … Sigmoidal curve.

•A fatigue crack grows with each

applied load cycle and therefore,
crack growth per unit cycle da/dN is
an important parameter.

•Paris law can be stated as..

…….where Y is factor F (a0/W)

Effect of crack growth on Sigmoidal curve C & m are material constant
(log-log scale)
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Improving life of tubes from fracture mechanics point
of view and reducing induced vibrations

Paris law … By integrating above equation we get

an expression for crack propagation
life…

….Fatigue life of tube can be

calculated from this relation

Now put 106 as value of Np and

calculate required value of Δσ to get
infinite life.
Effect of crack growth on Sigmoidal curve
(log-log scale)
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Improving life of tubes from fracture mechanics point
of view and reducing induced vibrations

•(Δσ)actual can be find out from experiments..

•Now check whether (Δσ)actual < (Δσ)therotical

• Will have an infinite

If Yes life with reduced
vibrations

• Try to reduce
If No vibrational bending
stresses Δσ

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Improving life of tubes from fracture mechanics point
of view and reducing induced vibrations

How to reduce vibrational bending stress?

•The main cause of the vibrational bending stresses in the tubes is

the high speed input steam.

•Therefore, such high stresses should be minimized using proper

methods such as using of an impingement plate under the
entrance gate, or installing one or two baffle plates supporting
heat exchanger tubes in the input steam region.

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 Cost optimization of shell and tube heat
exchanger
Total cost Ctot is taken as the objective function…

Ctot = Ci + Cod Total

Total cost discounted
operating
cost
Capital
investment

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 Cost optimization of shell and tube heat
exchanger
Adopting Hall's correlation, the capital investment Ci is computed
as a function of the exchanger surface area…

Ci = a1 + a2Aa3
…Where, a1 = 8000, a2 = 259.2 and a3 = 0.93 for exchanger made with
stainless steel for both shell-and-tubes.
annual
Pumping operating
And…
power time
(h/yr)

Co = PCeH
Where Co is annual operating cost and can be
calculated as…
Energy Cost
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 Cost optimization of shell and tube heat
exchanger

Each time the optimization algorithm changes the values of the design
variables do, Ds and B in an attempt to minimize the objective function.
Present approach uses the following steps for optimal heat exchanger design:
Step 1: Assuming values of a set of design variables and estimating heat
transfer area of the heat exchanger based on the required heat duty and other design
specification.
Step 2: Evaluation of the capital investment, operating cost and formulation of
the objective function.
Step 3: Utilization of the PSO algorithm to select a new set of values for the
design variables.
Step 4: Iteration of the previous steps until a minimum of the objective
function is found.

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 Cost optimization of shell and tube heat
exchanger
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm:

let f: ℝn → ℝ be the cost function which must be minimized

best known position of the entire swarm. A basic PSO algorithm is
then:
For each particle i = 1, ..., S do:
Initialize the particle's position with a uniformly distributed
random vector: xi ~ U (blo, bup), where blo and bup are the lower
and upper boundaries of the search-space.
Initialize the particle's best known position to its initial position:
pi ← xi
If (f(pi) < f(g)) update the swarm's best known position: g ← pi
Initialize the particle's velocity: vi ~ U(-|bup-blo|, |bup-blo|)
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 Cost optimization of shell and tube heat
exchanger
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm:

Until a termination criterion is met (e.g. number of iterations

performed, or a solution with adequate objective function value is
found), repeat:
For each particle i = 1, ..., S do:
For each dimension d = 1, ..., n do:
Pick random numbers: rp, rg ~ U(0,1)
Update the particle's velocity: vi,d ← ω vi,d + φp rp (pi,d-
xi,d) + φg rg (gd-xi,d)

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 Cost optimization of shell and tube heat
exchanger
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm:

Update the particle's position: xi ← xi + vi

If (f(xi) < f(pi)) do:
Update the particle's best known position: pi ← xi
If (f(pi) < f(g)) update the swarm's best known position:
g ← pi
Now g holds the best found solution
The parameters ω, φp, and φg are selected by the practitioner and
control the behavior and efficacy of the PSO method

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 Cost optimization of shell and tube heat
exchanger
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm:

Optimum
point

Initial
point

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Conclusions

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 Conclusion

1. After checking design from heat transfer point of view, designer has freedom to
choose between to modify the design of heat exchanger or to change its material.
Due to constraints of design one should try changing material.
2. If design is safe from heat transfer point of view it will not fail at high temperatures.
3. The vibration of tube is one of the main reasons of failure which can be prevented
by using of an impingement plate under the entrance gate, or installing one or two
baffle plates (DTS plates) supporting heat exchanger tubes in the input steam
region.
4. Life estimation from fracture mechanics point of view gives more accurate results
as it is not conservative method unlike life estimation from S-N curve.
5. If heat exchanger will fail in service, then the cost of each failure will be significant
as it can affect the production. Hence total cost incurred in operation of heat
exchanger must be optimized.
6. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm gives best way to optimize the cost.

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 Future scope
The environment effect can be considered in case of life
estimation from fracture mechanics point of view. The
modified Pascal law can be used to get more accurate or
practical results.

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