Effect of Temperature on Damping in Shell and Tube Heat Exchangers

Flow-induced vibration in heat exchangers has been a key source of concern in the process, power generation and nuclear industry for several decades. Many incidents of failure of heat exchangers due to apparent flow-induced vibration have been reported. Design of tube bundles with loosely supported tubes in baffles for process shell and tube heat exchanger and steam generator needs estimation of energy dissipation mechanisms or damping for a safer and long term operation. Damping has a major influence on the flow induced vibrations and is dependant on a variety of factors such as mechanical properties of the tube material, geometry and number of intermediate supports, the physical properties of shell-side fluid, type of tube motion, tube frequency, shell-side temperature etc. Various damping mechanisms have been identified and quantified such as Friction damping, Viscous damping, Squeeze film damping, Support damping and Two-Phase damping which affect the performance with respect to flow induced vibration design, including standard design guidelines. But generally the effects of the higher operating temperatures on the various damping mechanisms are neglected in the general design procedure. The operating temperatures play significant role on the contribution of various damping mechanisms. The current paper focuses on the thermal aspects of damping mechanisms subjected to single phase cross-flow in process heat exchangers and formulates the design guidelines for safer design based on experimental and empirical formulations. The research results show that he increase in the temperature results in the increase of the damping. Moreover it found that the natural frequency is higher for lower mass flow rate and lower working pressures and lower temperatures.