Thermal stress analysis and the sealing performance evaluation of bolted flange connection at elevated temperature

In designing bolted flange connections under heat conduction conditions and internal pressure, the characteristics such as the contact gasket stress are important factors from reliable design standpoint. They must be examined analytically and experimentally. In this paper, in order to examine the above characteristics, thermal stress of bolted flange connections subjected to internal pressure and heat conduction conditions is analyzed using the theory of elasticity and FEM calculations. The effects of gasket properties and nominal diameter of flanges on the above characteristics are examined numerically. In the experiments, the amount of helium gas leakage in the connection was measured. Using the obtained gasket stress at elevated temperature, a method for estimating the amount of gas leakage is proposed. The analytical results of the above characteristics are compared with the experimental results, with reasonable agreements. The results reveal that the sealing performance increases due to the gasket properties as the temperature increases in this study.