Using and Computing Metal Temperature for Asme Piping Class Optimization

The choice of piping classes for industrial use has important ramification on engineering projects ranging from safety considerations to cost-material effiency and environmental footprint. Usually, suitable piping classes are found by consulting fixed tables, such as the ASME code for piping classes, together with other values like required pressure resistance and pipe temperatures, the later often being a decisive factor for choosing one piping class over another. For the pipe and flange temperatures today mostly the fluid temperature is used, while sometimes rough approximations based on fluid temperature percentages are used, or more rarely, slow, and expensive finite element calculations are performed for individual cases. In this paper we demonstrate the significant benefits of choosing correct piping classes using precisely calculated pipe temperatures and propose an AI-based approach for fast and precise calculation of these pipe temperatures based on a training set derived from a limited number of finite element calculations performed by the authors. We also analyze in detail the benefits of this approach and provide concrete examples.