Heat-Exchanger Tube-Sheet Design—2: Fixed Tube Sheets

Abstract

Abstract It is shown that “fixed” tube sheets may be designed in exactly the same manner as “floating” tube sheets with the same boundary restraint, provided that a fictitious uniform “equivalent design pressure” is used in the calculations instead of the actual hydrostatic pressure. This equivalent pressure is evaluated in terms of tube-side pressure, shell-side pressure, differential thermal expansion, and the condition of boundary restraint. The design factors for all tube sheets presented in an earlier paper are shown to be well represented by very simple expressions when the fundamental design parameter xa becomes large.