Example 5: High-Pressure Industrial Gas Pipeline

Context:

You are a pipeline design engineer working for a major industrial gas supplier based in Belgrade, Serbia. Your current project involves designing a new segment of a critical pipeline intended to transport high-pressure industrial gases (e.g., nitrogen, oxygen, or natural gas) within a sprawling manufacturing facility. The pipeline is engineered to operate continuously at very high internal pressures, which necessitates a material with exceptional strength to prevent any risk of rupture or significant plastic deformation under sustained load. Given the hazardous nature of the gases and the importance of uninterrupted supply, the material must also exhibit good ductility. This is crucial to accommodate minor stresses from ground movement or vibrations, ensuring that the pipe deforms gracefully rather than fracturing catastrophically, thereby enhancing the overall safety and reliability of the system over its projected operational lifetime. All material properties for selection, including strength, ductility, and stiffness, are considered at room temperature for design calculations and practical installation processes. Furthermore, considering the extensive lengths and structural requirements of industrial pipelines, selecting a material that minimizes weight while still providing the necessary strength is advantageous for reducing installation costs, easing logistics, and minimizing the demands on supporting structures.

Objective:

Identify a material that offers a very high yield strength and good ductility, combined with sufficient stiffness and a reasonable density, making it suitable for a robust, high-pressure industrial gas pipeline.

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1

Select Total Materia Mode

Begin your search among the 500,000 materials in Total Materia to find the perfect match for your requirements.

2

Form

Add a Form criteria for "Tubular Products". This criterion should be set as mandatory to ensure all selected materials are available in tubes. Assign it the lowest importance score of 0.1, so while it ensures compatibility with the product form, it minimally influences the overall material score. This approach maintains a focus on key performance attributes while guaranteeing that the chosen materials meet basic form requirements.

3

High Yield Strength

Configure it as "Higher is better" with "High" importance (5). Set a high minimum constraint, for instance, 450 MPa, to ensure the pipe can safely withstand the extreme internal pressures without yielding or permanent deformation. Make this criterion mandatory

4

Elongation at Break

Configure it as "Higher is better" with "Medium" importance (2). Set a minimum constraint, 15%, to ensure the material possesses sufficient ductility. This is critical for preventing brittle fracture, and absorbing energy from minor impacts.

5

Modulus of Elasticity

Setting a minimum value of 180 GPa and a target to "Higher is better," ensure that the pipeline maintains adequate stiffness, limiting elastic deformation under pressure. This helps maintain dimensional stability and prevents excessive sagging over long distances. Since other factors might be prioritized, this criterion does not necessarily need to be assigned high importance or be mandatory.

This could be replace by a criteria limiting the material groups considered to structural steels or even stainless steels.

6

Cost

For all projects, it's crucial to keep costs low. However, in applications where safety is paramount, the cost criterion should not be set as mandatory, allowing flexibility in evaluating solutions.

7

Standards and Regions

Working with local standards offers the dual benefit of simplifying logistics and ensuring regulatory compliance. By being able to source materials locally, companies can significantly reduce potential delays related to shipping and customs processes, ensuring faster project timelines. Furthermore, selecting materials that adhere to local standards can simplify the qualification and approval of the project.

Adding a standard at this stage can help reduce the list of results. However, it is advised to make a pre-selection of the materials to use as input in Optimizer.

1. Use Standard search to find the materials included in the standard that you would like to follow

2. Create a list with these materials

3. Load them in Optimizer by using the Material List Mode

8

Modulate your parameters

Adjust the importance of the different criteria, and visualize how your results are varying.