The new flanged and flued module, written by PRG and distributed by TEMA is now available. The module is intended to standardize and significantly improve the accuracy of stress and stiffness calculations in thick wall expansion joints. The major benefit of the updated RCB-7 in the 2007 Ninth edition of the TEMA standard is that excessive conservatism in the expansion joint stiffness calculations have been removed, and so thick walled expansion joints will find a brader range of applicability in heat exchanger service. Thick walled expansion joints are significantly stronger than their thin-walled counterparts and can be easily formed. The major features of the flanged and flued module include:

1. Automatic geometry construction in accordance with TEMA RCB-8 2007 Ninth Edition.
2. Line “quick” element solution.
3. EJ Optimizer
4. Plastic Stiffness Options
5. Compliance in accordance with ASME Section VIII, Division 2 Appendices 4 and 5 and ASME Section VIII, Division 1, Part UHX-17.
6. Automatic Stress Classification Line (SCL) selection as per TEMA.

The leftmost figure below shows a deformed shape from the line element solution.

The rightmost figure above is the geometry options available in the expansion joint model.

Material properties can be brought in automatically from MatPRO.

Plastic stress-strain curves are generated automatically for users wanting plastic stiffnesses.

The thick-walled expansion joint optimizer has a trend plotter as part of the optimization process. The plots above show how the stiffness varies as a function of the inner and outer radii for two different flexible element thicknesses. All optimizer runs are summarized in a user-controlled table of results.