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Metallic Expansion Bellows Benefits
Metallic Expansion Joint
The most important feature of FLEXPERT Metallic Expansion Bellows is the multi-ply/multi-wall laminated bellows structure of the metal bellows elements. The metal bellows are manufactured from multi-wall laminated tube of plies ranging in number from 2 to 20 depending up on diameter and specified operating pressure and other design parameters.
Each of the thin layer acts as a nearly neutral fiber which offer significantly lower resistance to movements in the piping system than a single wall metal bellows. Significantly less force is required for actuating the laminated bellows.
Metallic Expansion Bellow Benefits
Thus with the same dimensions FLEXPERT multi-wall bellows can accept significantly more movements with ease. The stresses induced on the individual layers of FLEXPERT multi-wall bellows are a fraction of the stresses induced in the single wall bellows of equal thickness. This results in highest possible service life of the FLEXPERT laminated bellows.
- Increasing Flexibility & Reducing Deflection Forces.
- Higher Pressures & Lower Thrust Forces
- Lower Spring Rates & Higher Elasticity.
- Minimal Installation length due to high Elasticity.
- Fail safe design due to Multi-Wall Bellows Unit
- High corrosion resistance can be attained economically for Laminated Bellows.
Design and Manufacturing
We design and manufacture single as well as multi-ply metal bellows.The bellows is the basic element of an expansion joint and the following characteristics are given special attention during the bellows design process.
The Advantages of Metallic Expansion Bellows
- A catastrophic sudden failure is virtually impossible.
- The multi-ply inner core prevents the instantaneous bursting action.
- If a crack occurs for reasons like stress, corrosion fatigue failure in the inner or outer plies- the plies in between acting as labyrinth seal contain the pressure and the medium and hold the entire joint intact.
- A small bubble or blister occurs only in the outer ply.
- However the joint still performs satisfactorily for many thousands of cycles giving enough time for the procurement of the replacement.
- The inherent advantage of using multiple plies of relatively thin gauge material results in less residual stresses which are introduced at the time of forming the multi-wall bellows element .
- Also the thinner gauge multiple plies are subjected to less operating stresses compared to a single heavy gauge in operating cycles.
- For a given duty conditions FLEXPERT laminated bellows have lower built-in and operating stresses which ultimately results in longer life.
- The multi-ply / multi-wall laminated design results in to lower spring rates for a given pressure capacity.
- Also the effective cross sectional area of multiply laminated metal bellows is less compared to conventional bellows to accommodate a given movement.
- These two reductions result in to lower forces and moments on the anchors, equipments and guides supporting the piping system.
- The anchors and guides of the system can be dimensioned significantly smaller and more economically.
- This increases the life of the connected equipment and raises the reliability of the overall piping system keeping the piping cost to a minimum.
- Since multi-ply / multi-wall laminated bellows are having more flexibility than conventional bellows they require less length to accommodate a given movement in the pipelines.
- This makes the assembly of FLEXPERT multi-wall bellows more compact and economical.
- Because of higher flexibility and movement capacity, a small number of multi-wall bellows joints is sufficient to absorb large displacements compared to conventional thick single wall expansion joints.
- Even if the inner plies gets damaged the FLEXPERT multi-ply/multi-layer metal bellows does not loose its capacity to perform essential functions.
- Because of the intact outer plies the ability to resist pressure and the flexibitity of the the Metallic expansion joints are retained over a longer time.
- This gives enough time to replace the joint at the next planned shut-down.
- In order to reach the desired degree of protection only the ply of the bellows actually in contact with the medium is manufactured from special high corrosion and temperature resistant alloy.
- The remaining outer plies not in contact with the medium are selected from other economical standard stainless steels.