Experimental Study of U-Bolt Pipe Whip Restraint: Deformation Process and Energy Absorbing

This paper focuses on the U-bolt pipe whip restraint in the industrial plants, which is used to protect the equipment and prevent chain destruction under the circumstance that the pipe whip phenomenon occurs. And to achieve better protection performance the deformation process and energy absorbing situations are studied through experiments. The experiments are able to simulate the whipping pipe impacting the U-bolt pipe whip restraint with different velocity and input energy. This study presents a novel experiment method using a rigid sled to impact the U-bolt pipe whip restraint. This horizontal impact experiment method allows to change the mass and the impact velocity of the sled easily, so it is more convenient to design and control the experiments than traditional vertical experiment method. Results of ten experiments are analyzed in this study, and some basic parameters are achieved. A significant conclusion is found that the process of the U-bolt pipe whip restraint deformation and energy absorbing has four obvious phases. Velocity effect and mass effect are also taken into account to find more details of this process. The deformation and energy absorbing law can also be used in engineering design.