How to select flanges for a piping system?
Process piping and power piping are typically checked by pipe stress engineers to verify that the routing, nozzle loads, hangers, and supports are properly placed and selected such that allowable pipe stress is not exceeded under the appropriate ASME code. This checking is usually done with the assistance of a (finite element) pipe stress analysis program such as Caesar II, ROHR2, CAEPIPE and AUTOPIPE There are many different flange standards to be found worldwide. To allow easy functionality and inter-changeability, these are designed to have standardised dimensions. Common world standards include ASA/ANSI (USA), PN/DIN (European), BS10 (British/Australian), and JIS/KIS (Japanese/Korean). In most cases these are not interchangeable (eg an ANSI flange will not mate against a JIS flange). Further many of the flanges in each standard are divided into “pressure classes”, allowing flanges to be capable of taking different pressure ratings. Again these are not generally interchangeable (eg
