Effective Bending Properties for Stress Analysis of Rectangular Tubesheets

Abstract

The analysis of perforated plates has immediate application to tubesheet design. However, successful tubesheet stress analysis requires knowledge of tubesheet elastic properties; considerable effort has therefore been directed toward their determination. The research effort to date has focused on triangular and square, fully packed tube arrays usually employed in circular tubesheets. In this paper, a simple analytical expression is proposed which is suitable for determination of the effective bending stiffness of a perforated plate having both fully packed and laned arrays. Using available data on triangular and square tube arrays, together with some additional test data on tube arrays in common use on large power plant condensers with rectangular tubesheets, it is shown that a simple analytical relationship for determination of required effective bending stiffness gives good agreement with available data.