I recently viewed the EN 1591 flange calculations and found it very informative.

My question is will ASME / B31 Codes endorse this flange analysis method?

Pat LaPointe

I'll step out on the branch to say not anytime soon.

My perception is that external societal references, e.g. ASME to ASCE are kept to a minimum. I suspect this is on design because the authors of one are generally aren't of the other, and don't wish to risk trying to force one society to "turn on a dime" when another makes an unexpected change.

Further, US law refers to ASME, ASCE, API, etc and the US agencies work in tandem to produce some of the codes. At best, you might eventually find a "may use" suggestive clause, but not a prescriptive one that endorses it.

Thank you very much for your reply Michael. I figured as much but I would not be able to articulate my thoughts on this subject as well as you just did.

Regards,

Pat

Michael, just curious about how are seen in States the following
WRC Bulletin 538 Determination of Pressure Boundary Joint Assembly Bolt Loads
and
ASME PCC-1 - 2019 Guidelines for Pressure Boundary Bolted Flange Joint Assembly, APPENDIX O- ASSEMBLY BOLT STRESS DETERMINATION

As calculation methods, for me they appear to be an abandon of the classical Taylor-Forge (of course we can use here a nice word as "improvement") and a movement toward EN.

So I would reformulate Pat's question as
(Do you think) Will ASME / B31 Codes endorse APPENDIX O of ASME PCC-1?

Thanks,
M

Mario,

I can't really speak for all industries, or even too many people, so I'll just speak for myself, a contractor doing work for various clients, but notably not in the nuclear sector.

Aside from the modules built into CAESAR, I've only seen requirements to use API 6AF (which is limited to API flanges, of course); I personally haven't seen anyone push WRC 538.

I can't really comment on the familiarity of one committee's members' on another committee's works. I would speculate some of the same reticence will remain, even within the same umbrella Society.

Thanks, Michael.

You know, it is something strange with flanges calculation in US engineering history.
As theory, Taylor-Forge is in fact wrong in a particular point of their demonstration but flanges designed are good enough in real world. I guess this is the root of reticence you've mentioned.

The price is just one century of reticence. Even today we evaluate the stress in flanges with ridiculous low bolt loads, for gasket load we use a formula that appears to be pressure proportional when it is intuitive that the pressure reduces the gasket load... well, is just functioning despite my reticence. For me is something as counting 1+1=11 when we need 5+5=10, but finally we get a good 10% conservative approximation. OK, what to say more?

WRC Bulletin 538 and ASME PCC-1 (which corrected the wrong reference to WRC 528...) are just good tentatives to rejoin the theory with reality. But reticence will make the future, I guess.

In the end, just to stay on topic, the EN method fundamentals are in an old standard of a former German Democratic Republic. Amazing, isn't it?