The design of piping system is a very critical activity. It requires knowledge of the all-around process of plants and various aspects of designing systems requirements. As we all know, the Maximum part of any plant is covered by piping and equipment, It is very important piping designing must be perfect to avoid any clashes.
Piping Engineers and Designers must follow their duty with maximum care to avoid any mistake in the calculation of stress, Load, working pressure and temperature, and many more aspects. In the further paragraphs, you will get to know a brief on Piping designing aspects and an introduction about this
Table of Contents
Design Piping System – Introduction
Pipes of the design piping systems are the nervous system of a particular Process in the Thermal or Oil & Gas industries. Piping systems are the best source of conveying fluids, liquid mixtures of water, and an insoluble solid material such as cement or clay, solids, air, etc. under myriad conditions as compelled by Process requirements.
On average these junk sets of connections are subjected to the amount of pressure, temperature, or a mix of both. Furthermore, these piping systems are again related to erosion, corrosion, noxious condition, etc. finally it produces a finesse design for piping system facilitating a mess or a danger-free operation of a plant for a longer duration.
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Design Piping System – Contents and Coverage
The piping design system is a broad and vast field. This covers and engineers the following things for an efficient process:
- Necessities of piping materials and its components
- Pipe design
- Stress and load calculation
- Pipe fabrication
- Piping Assembly
- Piping Erection
- Assessment
- Inspection
- Hydrotest for piping
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Costing of Piping System
Total expenditure of piping covers the major part of the investment in any process plant excluding the major equipment. The piping itself takes up 15 % of the overall material cost. Where in man-hours consumption for design piping system is 25%, detail design is 65% including piping design and finally, 35% of man-hours are consumed in implementation.
On average from the entire efforts involved in the project management, detail design (DD) engineering, procurement, quality control, etc. 65% of the man-hours are utilized in DD out of which 25% is utilized only in piping and the rest 40% is consumed by other disciplines i.e. Mechanical, Electrical, Civil, Environment, instrumentation, etc.
Perfection and finesse to the maximum design piping system mainly rely on the As-built information of equipment either static or rotating, procured control valves, in-line instruments such as flow meter, venture meter, and so on. Hence piping GA’s cannot be finalized until the appropriate equipment fabrication schedule or vendor feedback. Ensuing the delay in the release of the drawing for construction.
Design of Piping System – Know How
Knowledge of a piping designer shall not be limited to practical piping implementation. In fact, the knowledge of piping material cost, metal composition, effects, and methods of fabrication could be an added advantage in economical pipe design.
As design piping system is the most significant part of DD engineering basic information of various disciplines i.e. process, civil, the instrumentation is collectively essential.
Design Piping System is subjected to liquid or process pressure and un-stabilized temperatures resulting in contraction or expansion of pipes so-called stresses. These stresses are further transferred to connected myriad types of equipment as designed by process requirements ending up in breakdown.
Hence to rectify these sorts of practical problems he/she should have basic information of structural engineering combined with good engineering practices, standard codes, and process engineering would be an icing on the cake.
Unlimited patience and the best visualization of 3-dimensional drawings are said to be the best features of a piping engineer.
Design of Piping System – Latest Techniques
Computers and their specially designed software have been developed to implement easy and speedy solutions which either produce the drawing with very less consumption of time but also compose the drawing in maximum accuracy but also resolve piping stress analysis.
A myriad of soft-wares is being introduced in the market for effortless and uncomplicated and accurate isometrics, Bill of materials, thus including stress analysis as well Plant Design and Management system(PDMS) software is the best user friendly and sited example.
It would be fair enough to say sophisticated method the 3D modeling in PDMS has been a revolution in design piping system in the recent past. The advanced technology not only helps to build an entire plant in a 3D model soft media but also the practical problems can be identified and errors can be rectified at the design stage.
Types of Piping Design Software
According to capabilities and application of piping design software, they are divided into 02 groups:
- 2-D piping design softwares: In today’s world 3D softwares are prefered but 2D softwares are also in use to design different types of piping drawing like; Isometrics, GAD, P&ID etc.
- 3-D piping design software: A 3D design software design and represent all piping component and laayout in 3D view that makes it easier for the user to visualise and execute the piping network physically on site.
Best 3D piping Design Softwares
3D piping design software is widely used and popular nowadays. Because with the help of these piping design software it is easy to depict the complete plant layout in a 3-dimensional environment. 3D models of plants are very easy to understand because they represent the exact replica of real plants.
Some of the widely used 3D piping design software are:
- SP3D by Hexagon
- E3D/PDMS by AVEVA
- AutoPLANT 3D by Bentley
- AutoCAD Plant 3D by AutoDESK
- CADWorx Plant Professional by Hexagon
- M4 plant by Cad-schroer
- Edrawmax by Edrawsoft
Best 2D piping design Softwares
With the technical improvement, most of the companies prefer 3D software for the design of the piping systems. But still, the use of 2D piping design software is continuing in the industry. Some of the most common and best 2D piping design software are:
- AutoCAD
- Microstation
- PROCAD
- AVICAD
- IronCAD
- Lucidchart
Conclusion
Design of the piping system is responsible work that must be done carefully for cost-efficient and easy but safe execution of the project. The design of the piping system is subjected to liquids, gases, and semi-solids with varying pressure and temperature resulting in contraction and expansion of pipes.
A good designer always know-how:
- To design an efficient project for Reduing the efforts of execution.
- To minimize the cost of overall project.
- The basic principles of process of plant
- Visualise the ideas and transfer it in its design for easy understanding of people who execute the project.
- Resolve quries and clashes among different discipline.
