I need to analyze the effects of a relief valve discharging into a closed piping system. B31.1 and Caesar II offer good explanation for open piping systems, however they provide little information or examples for analyzing the effect of relief valves discharging into a closed system. Does anyone know where any specific examples can be located?

search under relief piping....

As for examples you are under the misconception this is an easy problem....

Dead right John.!!!!

If you search, you will find that most of the questions to this have been asked by myself!!!!!!!

I default to the worst case i can possibly project onto the pipe and work from there.

But for a closed system, i insist the branch to header ratio is high, so that the "slug" discharges into an effectivly "open vessel"
I then treat the relief event as firing a shell out of a cannon.
Lots of actions and reactions, canceling out or not as the case may be.

It will pay to:

A) have help from somebody who is competant
B) Have the philosophy agreed by client and your design team

I don't believe there is a right answer, but there is a wrong one!!
(and i'm not being smart)
Dynamic analysis might help if things get pretty wild,

Tim

Hello jcrookshank,

See this:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=164679&page=1

And another:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=39725&page=50

just a word,
open you mind to EXACTLY what it is you want to do.
~I had a discussion with another office yesterday about how to do these.
They are in the same park as myself, but are a little less conservative.
(unjustified in my opinion)

Tim