Cause analysis of vibration in shell-and-tube heat exchanger

Abstract

Heat exchanger is a universal process equipment, which is widely used in chemical industry, oil refining, thermal power and other industries. Shell-and-tube heat exchangers often fail prematurely due to flow-induced vibration. In this paper, aiming at the problem of severe vibration of shell-and-tube heat exchanger in an enterprise, the vibration acceleration sensors are used to measure the vibration of shell and tube side of heat exchanger. Through the analysis of the measurement results, it is found that when the flow rate on the shell side of the heat exchanger is greater than 50000 Nm3/h, the flow-induced vibration of the tube bundle occurs, and the vibration frequency is 57Hz, which is close to the natural frequency of the tube bundle. And the greater the flow rate on the shell side, the more intense the vibration. In order to reduce the vibration of heat exchanger, the damping measure of inserting baffles between tubes is adopted.