×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

`Rule of Thumb' Pipe Velocities

`Rule of Thumb' Pipe Velocities

`Rule of Thumb' Pipe Velocities

(OP)
Howdy All,

For water flow in pipe, anyone know of a source for `rule of thumb' (typical) maximum acceptable velocities in different kinds of pipe?

Thanks!

RE: `Rule of Thumb' Pipe Velocities

Cannot begin to count the number of times this same question has been asked and discussed before with numerous references to various sources.  Suggest you do a keyword search on this forum.

RE: `Rule of Thumb' Pipe Velocities

coachk,

Yes, this question has been asked about a zillion times in this forum......

Perform a search and read some of the other responses.....

For water in carbon steel piping, the "sweet spot" of design is from 5 to 10 feet/second......this gives reasonable piping costs and reasonable pumping costs. Much higher velocities can cause erosion in systems of elevated temperature....... a lot depends on system tremperature....( See Crane Technical paper #410 for more details and a better explanation)

Stainless steel piping systems can tolerate higher velocities.....up to about 15 feet per second....as I recall

There are technical publications by the people who sell titanium tube an piping that talk about velocities to ~30 feet/second with no erosive effects.......but of course there are pumping versus capital costs

MJC

"There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation." W.C. Fields  

RE: `Rule of Thumb' Pipe Velocities

(OP)
1969grad & mjcronin,

I tried the Advanced Search prior to posting the question, and thought that I was using the most extensive search by clicking on the `All' or `Any' word search...but kept getting the `Sorry' message.  After 1969grad's response I tried searching again using every combination of wording that I could think of.....then by chance found several forums by clicking the `Exact Phrase' button.  Maybe it is just me, but that does not quite seem right.  I still appreciate the responses and find the site helpful.

Thanks!

RE: `Rule of Thumb' Pipe Velocities

Dear friend,
The following velocities are recommended by the Heat Exchnage Institute for feed water passing through the tubes.

Stainless steel, Monel, Inconel - 3 m/s
Copper-nickel(70-30,80-20 and 90-10) - 2.7 m/s
Admiralty and copper - 2.6 m/s
Carbon steel - 2.4 m/s

Regards,
KMPillai

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources