Why do gas pipelines run straight for a few hundred metres/yards then do a bit of a U-bend, straight run for a bit, then another U-bend etc. Why the bend? No valves or anything where the bend is.
In: 7658
I’m sure you’ve mostly got your answer from above but, I’ll explain what my thought process was for someone who worked Frac before I got Pipeline. For the Frac crew itself the site is mostly a massive jumble of very very heavy pipes going from your pumps to the wellhead. We were taught very early that we could only go about 50 feet of straight joints before we had to put what we called a chiksan swivel essentially in between your two straight pipe structures. Now this helped for a number of things, if you had to aim or slightly move where the pipe was headed you had to use the chiksan to aim it but, it was also required because of the massive pressure going through the pipe.
Now I know pipeline has way way way less pressure than we used in Frac, talking like 500 for pipeline and up to 9k, 14k psi in Frac. But pressure is pressure, and the vibrations caused by the pressure would actually put too much strain on a very very long straight join of pipe, hence the chiksan swivels.
I have no idea if this has any bearing on why they use the u-bend’s in pipeline (all I did was haul pipe) but, it’s what i always assumed was the reason for it.
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