M. A.

Habib1
e-mail: mahabib@kfupm.edu.sa

I. Al-Zaharnah
M. El-Shafei
S. A. M. Said
N. Merah
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals,
Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia

S. Al-Anizi
M. Y. Al-Awwad
M. Hajji
Department of Consulting Services,
Saudi Aramco,
Dhahran 31311, Saudi Arabia

Influence of Boiler Load Swing

Rates on Effective Stresses of
Drum Boiler Riser Tubes
In this paper, different rates of steam flow (swing rates) are used to demonstrate the
transient changes in both the drum-boiler steam pressure and the wall temperature levels
in addition to stresses in the walls of steam risers. A MATLAB code was written to integrate
the nonlinear dynamic governing equations for solving the water volume, the drum pressure, and the steam quality at the exit of the riser tubes. The same code is also used for
calculating the steam riser inner and outer wall temperatures based on the inner wall
heat transfer coefficient. The temporal riser pipe pressure and the inner and outer pipe
wall temperatures have been incorporated into an ANSYS model for calculating the effective combined thermal and pressure-caused stresses numerically. The combined effective
stress fluctuation for the highest swing rate (40%) is found to be too low to induce any
damage in the riser tube. The controlled pressure level has been compared with an actual
pressure reading from an existing drum boiler under operating conditions for the purpose
of validating the control parameters employed in the study. An optimization method for
reducing the steam pressure overshoot level in the boiler is also proposed.
DOI: 10.1115/1.4001653
Keywords: boiler dynamics, boiler control, drum boiler, riser tube, effective stresses

Introduction

Steam generators that are commonly used in many industrial

processes may experience rapid and dynamic changes in the steam
demand. The rapid increase in steam demand results in a rapid
decrease in drum pressure. The decrease in drum pressure is normally met by a corresponding rise in the firing rates, thus, heat
flux along the riser and downcomer tubes are increased and may
result in tube overheating due to an increase in the riser wall
temperature and therefore riser effective stresses. The problem
impact is not only due to the cost of replacing defective parts, but
also due to the frequent need of system shutdown and the possible
imminent safety hazards. To avoid such a problem, limits of boiler
load swing rates to control boiler firing in order to prevent tubes
overheating, high pressure fluctuations, and effective stresses are
to be investigated.
A research in the area of boiler performance under dynamic
operation includes optimization of control methods to avoid sudden changes in thermal and mechanical stresses. It also includes
research during boiler start-up and boiler swing. Dynamic simulation models of boilers provide a very cost effective tool to study
plant transient characteristics with the aim to improve the design
and control strategies to meet stringent operational requirements.
The dynamic performance of boilers and steam generators has
been a major subject of study, and several investigations have
been conducted on controlling their performance. Maintaining acceptable levels of working thermomechanical stresses in components of boilers and steam generators during start-up, shutdown,
and load changing is one of the main criteria employed for optimizing the operational performance of boilers and steam generators. Controlling the internal pressure and the associated steam
1
Corresponding author.
Contributed by the Pressure Vessel and Piping Division of ASME for publication
in the JOURNAL OF PRESSURE VESSEL TECHNOLOGY. Manuscript received July 27, 2009;
final manuscript received April 21, 2010; published online October 20, 2010. Assoc.
Editor: Hyunjae Park.

Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology

temperature change rates during the heating and cooling changes

is necessary for minimizing the developed stresses in the walls of
boiler components.
Motivated by a model-based control, Astrom and Bell 1 developed a nonlinear dynamic model for drum boilers. The model
describes the complicated dynamics of the drum, downcomer, and
riser components. The model is based on physical parameters of
the plant such as the boiler configuration, the operating parameters, and the state variables. The goal was to develop a model
which captures the key dynamical properties over a wide operating range. Kim and Choi 2 developed a model for water level
dynamics in the drum-riser-downcomer loop of a natural circulation drum-type boiler. The model is based on basic conservation
rules of mass, momentum, and energy, together with the constituent equations. The work provides an investigation of the response
of water level dynamics to changes in steam demand and/or heating rate. The results were compared with those of Astrom and Bell
1. Like the model by Astrom and Bell 1, the assumption of
metal temperature being equal to the steam saturation temperature
and the linear variation of the steam quality along the riser tubes is
employed. Franke et al. 3 utilized the MODELICA software for
modeling the thermofluid processes of a simple drum boiler during the start-up period. The model was based on mass and energy
conservation equations together with property relations for liquid
and vapor phases. The model was applied to a 70 MW coal-fired
boiler, considering important components such as the furnace,
economizer, superheaters, headers, spray water injection, and long
pipes. A drum boiler start-up simulation program for controlled
and natural circulation boilers was developed by Li et al. 4. The
model is based on the principles of mass, energy, and momentum
conservations. The simulation results were compared with experimental measurements.
On the control side, Silva et al. 5 described the application of
a predictive adaptive controller to the regulation of superheated
steam temperature in a commercial boiler. The objective of the
investigation was testing the use of a predictive adaptive controller for the regulation of superheated steam temperature in the
presence of load changes. The work of Kruger et al. 6 proposed

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a quadratic programming optimization to find the optimal reference values for boiler firing rate, steam pressure, and steam temperature during start-up. Wang et al. 7 provided an investigation
on intelligence-based hybrid control for power plant boiler. A hybrid classical/fuzzy control methodology was presented to integrate low-level machine control and high-level supervision for the
steam temperature process of the power plant boiler. The results
showed that the steam temperature can be stably maintained
whenever disturbances are large or small, and a better control
performance as compared with traditional methods was achieved
7. Gough 8 applied an advanced control of steam superheat
temperature on a utility boiler. The paper described an adaptive
predictive model to the control of the superheater steam temperature. It was proposed to use a variable speed water pump and a
control system for the pump speed to account for the varying
pressure difference between water feed and drum pressure.
Some research papers accommodated the working stresses of
boilers in the control design and analysis of boilers and steam
generators. A new control solution aiming at improving the
start-up procedures of boilers and explicitly taking the thermal
stress values of critical components into account has been presented by Kruger et al. 6,9. The presented boiler model has
shown that it is possible to obtain boiler models using only state
variables, which can be measured or only a few additional nonmeasurable states. An on-line optimization of drum boiler start-up
was investigated by Franke et al. 3. The cost function of the
optimization model was taken to be in terms of the deviations of
the steam pressure and steam flow rates from their reference values, while the thermal stress was taken as an output constraint.
Examples of an improved main steam temperature control and
operation of a drum boiler turbine bypass system were presented
by Peet and Leung 10 to demonstrate the value of dynamic
capability to maintain the steam temperature deviation over wideload ranges or during rapid load changes, which can increase the
permissible rate of load change due to thermal stress limitations.
Taler et al. 11 developed a new method for determining thermal
stresses in boilers during start-up. They presented a new method
of transient temperature field identification in the drum on the
basis of measured temperature changes at locations on the outer
insulated surface of the drum. The methods accuracy was demonstrated by a comparison of thermal distributions obtained by
FEM. An analysis of transient temperature and stress distribution
in boiler components during start-up and shutdown operations has
been presented by WJglowski et al. 12. The thermal stresses
have been determined indirectly on the basis of measured temperature values taken at selected points on the outer surface of a
construction element. Monitoring of boilers thermal and strength
operation conditions allowed finding the dangerous loads on
power boilers pressure elements during the boiler start-up and
shutdown operations.
From the above literature review, it can be seen that none of the
authors addressed the specific problem of thermal stress variation
due to swing rate in the boiler riser tubes. Most of the research
works that dealt with thermal stress variations in boilers and heaters have done it for start-up and shutdown operations only. The
problem of the effect of different swing rates on thermal- and
pressure-caused stresses has not been explicitly addressed, nor has
this stress fluctuation effect on the tubes life studied. The objective of this research paper is to analyze the combined thermal- and
pressure-induced stress response of the drum boiler riser tubes due
to rates of heating load that vary under controlled conditions with
the changed rates of the steam flow rate. The nonlinear dynamic
governing equations are integrated simultaneously using MATLAB
for solving the water volume, the pressure, and the steam quality
at the exit of the riser tubes. The inner and outer temperatures of
the riser tubes are calculated after solving for the heat transfer
coefficient at the inner wall of the riser tubes at different time
steps. For different swing rates of steam flow, the combined
stresses are computed. A FEM model has been used for calculat061301-2 / Vol. 132, DECEMBER 2010

Table 1 The physical and steady state boiler operational data

at MCR
Drum saturation pressure kPa
Drum saturation temperature C
Steam mass flow kg/s
Total energy input MW
Vd = volume of drum m3
Ad = water surface area of drum m2
md = mass of drum kg
Vr = total volume of riser tubes m3
Di = inner diameter of a riser tube
Do = outer diameter of a riser tube
mr = total mass of riser tubes kg
Vdc = volume of downcomer tube m3
C p=C = specific heat of metal kJ/kg K

4996.6
263.9
66.5
208.2
40
20
140,000
37
0.0672
0.0762
160,000
11
0.5

ing the combined effective stresses in the riser tubes. The possibility of damage induced by resulting temperature and stress
variations is investigated. An optimized control approach is introduced in the study.

Modeling

2.1 Dynamic Model of the Drum Boilers. The boiler under

consideration here is of the water-tube natural circulation type.
The operational and physical data of the drum boiler used in the
study are presented in Table 1. The main components of the boiler
are the steam drum, the downcomer, and the riser tubes Fig. 1,
which represent the complete water circulation loop. Most of thermal energy is added to the fluid while flowing in the riser tubes
and thus boiling takes place.
The following are the governing equations. The system considered includes the drum, riser, and downcomer. The governing
equations 1 consist of the conservation of mass and energy of
the total system, the equations governing the phase change in the
drum including the steam and water volumes inside the drum, and
the rate of steam condensation and the equations for the flow
circulation in the riser-downcomer loop, which describe the transport of mass, energy, and momentum. Thus, a set of nonlinear
differential equations representing the time dependence of the
state variables of the pressure P, total volume of water Vwt, and
steam quality at the exit of the riser tube x can be presented in a
matrix form as follows:

Fig. 1
loop

Construction of the boiler furnace: water circulation

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a11 a12 0
a21 a22 0
a31 0

a33

dP/dt

fw m
s
m

+m
fwh fw m
sh s
dVwt/dt = Q
dx/dt

dc
Q xh fgm

Table 2 The thermal model constants 15

The model derived parameters are given by

a11 = Vwt

w
s
+ Vst
P
P

a12 = w s

a21 = Vwt hw

1.136
0.9
667.2
0.7

C5 0.3

0.6683
0.2
1058
0.7
0.3 C5 = 0 for vertical tubes and =0 for horizontal tubes
if Fr is greater than 0.04

w
hw
s
hs
tm
+ w
+ s
+ Vst hs
Vt + mmtC p
p
p
p
p
p

a22 = whw shs

C1
C2
C3
C4

a31 = w

CO 0.65 CO 0.65

Re =

Fr is the Froude number =

hw
w
s
hs
Vr
xh fg
+ s
1 Vr + 1 xh fg
p
p
p
p

+ s + xw sh fgVr

tm
Vr + mmtC p
p
p

a33 = 1 xs + xwh fgVr

To Ti
Rpipe

and

qDo =

To Ts
Rconv

Rpipe =

lnDo/Di
2Kpipe

and Rconv =

1
D ih

with Kpipe as the thermal conductivity of the pipe material and h is

the heat transfer coefficient of the water film inside the tube. Kpipe
is kept constant throughout the time domain of the solution. It
should be noted that Eq. 8 is solved under steady state conditions. This assumption is justified by the high capacity of water in
the system.
For calculating the heat transfer coefficient including convection evaporation and nucleate boiling terms and is expressed as
13

13

r
m
and Di is the pipe diameter
Ar

CO = convection number =

q
Gh fg

15

1x
x

0.8

s
w

14

0.5

16

where w is the density of liquid phase and s is the density of the

vapor phase. x is the steam quality, and the constants C1, C2, C3,
C4, and C5 are given in Table 2.
2.3 Steam Pressure Control and Optimization Scheme.
The boiler control system uses a three-term control strategy. The
demanded heating power Qt is determined based on the deviation of the drum pressure Pdt from the pressure set point. The
control law is given by

where q is the heat flux at the outside surface of the tubes, Do is

the pipe outer diameter, Ti and To are the wall temperatures at the
inner and outer walls of the tube, Ts is the water saturation temperature, and Rconv and Rpipe are the resistances of the inner water
film and the pipe wall per unit length. They are calculated from
the following relations:

G2

l2gDi

BO is the boiling number =

2.2 Thermal Model. The following equations are used to calculate the inside and outside wall temperatures of the riser tube:
qDo =

G = mass flux =

where is the average value of the void fraction along the riser
tube, Vr is the volume of the riser tubes, mmt is the total mass of
the system, and tm is the metal temperature. w, s and hw, hs are
the density and specific enthalpy of water and steam; h fg is the
specific enthalpy of evaporation h fg = hs h f .

12

Fk is a fluid dependent parameter =1 for water

G1 xDi

E pt = Psp Pdt
Qt = Qi + kqp E pt + kqi

E ptdt + kqd

17
dE pt
dt

18

where Psp is the drum pressure set point; Pdt is the measured
drum pressure; Qi is the initial heat flow; and kqp, kqi, and kqd are
the proportional, integral, and derivative control parameters,
respectively.
To maximize the swing rate, within the operation constraints,
the problem is formulated as a constrained optimization problem,
where an objective function is minimized with respect to the control parameters and the steam demand. The objective function is
the weighted sum of several performance objectives. The swing
rate is taken to be the percent change in steam load over a period
of 1 min. The performance objectives include the following:

11

The maximum percent overshoot/undershoot of the heating

power.
The maximum percent overshoot/undershoot of the drum
pressure.
The weighted sum of the square of the difference between
the drum pressure and the drum pressure set point. The
weighting values are exponentially increasing with time to
penalize drum pressure oscillations.
Weighted reward value for large swing rate large steam
load.

where Re is the Reynolds number of the flow inside the tube and
Pr is the Prandtl number for water. Pr is kept constant throughout
the time domain of the solution.

The performance is calculated over a period starting from the

new steam load value. Several operational constraints were also
imposed, including upper and lower limits of the firing rate, drum

h = hLc1COc225 Frlc5 + c3BOc4Fk

10

where hL is the single phase heat transfer coefficient and is calculated from the DittusBoelter equation 14
Nu = 0.023Re0.8Pr0.4

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2.4 Combined Stress Problem. The finite element method

has been employed for solving the heat conduction equation to
determine the temperature distribution in the riser pipe wall. Resulting temperature profiles are integrated numerically for finding
the effective thermal stresses in the wall. Grid size independency
tests have been conducted for finding the optimum number of
elements and for obtaining results with maximum accuracy. The
riser pipe wall was divided into SOLID98 ANSYS elements. The
SOLID98 ANSYS element is a ten-node tetrahedral coupled-field
solid version of the eight-node SOLID5 ANSYS element 16. The
element has a quadratic displacement behavior and is well suited
to model either regular or irregular meshes. Each of the ten nodes
has six degrees of freedom at each node. The effective stresses in
the cylinder wall are calculated from the solved obtained temperature and pressure distributions, according to the von Mises theory
17,18

effective = 2 + l2 + r2 l + l + lr1/2

19

= T + P

20

r = rT + rP

21

l = lT + lP

22

where

where , r, and l are the tangential, radial, and longitudinal

stresses, respectively, and where T, rT, and lT are the thermal tangential, radial, and longitudinal stresses, respectively, and
given as

r2 + ri2
E
2
1 r r2o ri2

r =

ro

T rdr +

ri

T rdr T r2

ri

ro

r2 ri2
E
2
1 r r2o ri2

z =

E
1

23

T rdr +

ri

T rdr

24

ri

ro

r2o ri2

T rdr T

25

ri

where E is the modulus of elasticity, is Poissons ratio, and is

the thermal expansion coefficient of the riser tube material. The
tangential, longitudinal, and radial stresses caused by pressure
stresses, P, rP, and lP, are given as

rP =
P =

ri2 P
r2o ri2
ri2 P
r2o

ri2

r2o
r2

26

1+

r2o
r2

27

lP = 0

28

The transient thermal stresses part of the total stresses of the riser
tube are calculated based on the identified inner and outer wall
temperatures of the tube using Eqs. 2325. The temperature
061301-4 / Vol. 132, DECEMBER 2010

75
70

Steam flow rate (kg/s)

level and drum pressure, and maximum rate of feed water. The
optimization problem is then solved using a genetic algorithm
GA. A genetic algorithm is a method for solving both constrained and unconstrained optimization problems that is based on
natural selection, i.e., the process that drives biological evolution.
The genetic algorithm repeatedly modifies a population of individual solutions. At each step, the genetic algorithm selects individuals at random from the current population to be parents and
uses them to produce the children for the next generation. Over
successive generations, the population evolves toward an optimal
solution 15.

65
60
55
50
45
40
0

3000

6000

9000

12000

15000

Time (s)

Fig. 2 Steam flow rate reading of the current boiler

histories are determined at different time points from the values of

heat transfer coefficients at the inner surface of the tube using Eqs.
8 and 9. Both the tube pressure and the inner and outer wall
temperatures were employed in the FEM simulation.

Solution Procedure

The present model solves the differential equations of pressure,

quality, and total water volume. Equation 1 was solved simultaneously using an explicit method with a time step of 1.0 s for a
total time of 1500 s. The coefficients in these equations were
obtained from Eqs. 27. In order to integrate the differential
equations of the system, a MATLAB subroutine was developed. The
computed pressure and temperature values were then used to numerically calculate the effective von Mises stresses Eq. 19 at
each time step.

Results and Analysis

4.1 Validation. Measurements of boiler operating conditions

were conducted for a typical Saudi Aramco boiler having the
steady state conditions of drum pressure of 4480 kPa and steam
flow rate of 44.7 kg/s. The boiler having the maximum continuous
rating MCR operating conditions as shown in Table 1 is connected to a gas turbine steam cogeneration unit through a pressure
header. Due to an upset in the gas turbine unit tripped gas turbine, the header pressure dropped. This is followed by an increase in the steam flow rate from other boilers including the
boiler under concern, which resulted in a pressure drop in the
steam drum of this boiler. As the drum pressure drops, the control
system responds to recover the pressure drop toward the set point
value by increasing the fuel flow rate. The variations in the steam
flow rate are given in Fig. 2. As shown by the figure, the steam
flow rate increases at around 12,000 s by around 60% in almost
700 s i.e., 5.1% per minute of the operating value or around 3.4%
of the MCR value. The results of the field data were used for
validating the present nonlinear dynamic system under the conditions of a closed loop system. Thus, the steam flow rate of the
field results Fig. 2 was supplied as input data for the nonlinear
dynamic model and the response of the drum pressure was calculated. The results are shown in Figs. 3 and 4. Figure 3 provides the
calculated and measured drum pressure, while Fig. 4 provides a
close up view. The results show that the procedure provides good
agreement, and the variations in the pressure are well captured by
the present model, particularly in the region from 0 to around
17,000 s. The rest of the time period indicates some discrepancies.
These discrepancies are attributed to the rise of the pressure setpoint in the experimental side. Although this rise was taken into
account in the present calculations, but the exact new value of the
pressure setpoint was not known. As well, it should be noted that
the small oscillations appearing in the steady state region upTransactions of the ASME

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65

5000
4900

Steam flow rate (kg/s)

Calculated Pressure
Experimental data

4800

Pressure, kPa

4700
4600
4500
4400
4300
4200
4100

60
step rise = 5%
step rise = 10%
step rise = 20%
step rise = 40%

55
50
45
40

4000
0

5000

10000
Time, s

15000

20000

300

4.2 Calculated Operating Conditions and Thermal

Stresses. Thermal stresses of the riser tubes were calculated at
different values of swing rates in the steam flow rate exiting the
boiler. The steam flow rate was increased to 40% using different
schemes of 5%, 10%, 20%, and 40% per minute. These correspond to 3.4%, 6.7%, 13.4%, and 26.8% of the MCR value per
minute. Thus, 8 5%, 4 10%, 2 20%, and 1 40% step rises
were applied. The variations in the steam flow rate corresponding
to these step rises are shown in Fig. 5. The calculations include
drum pressure, inner and outer wall temperature, and effective
thermal stresses of the riser walls. Equation 1 was used for the
calculation of drum pressure, steam quality, and riser wall temperature. Equation 1 was also used to calculate drum pressure
and steam quality. Equation 8 was used to calculate the riser
wall temperature, and Eqs. 2325 were used to calculate the
effective thermal stresses. The response of the drum pressure to
the variations in the steam flow rate is shown in Fig. 6. The
increase in the steam flow rate results in a pressure drop in the
steam drum. As the pressure drops in the steam drum of the boiler,
the control system responds to recover the pressure drop toward
the set point pressure by increasing the fuel flow rate. The pressure oscillates around the steady state value and stabilizes at
around 500 s. The figure shows that the overshooting in the drum
pressure increases as the step rise in the steam flow rate increases
and ranges between 130 kPa and 80 kPa around the steady state
value.
Figure 7 presents the inner and outer wall temperatures of the
riser wall. The inner wall temperature oscillates within 3.2 K and

900

1200

1500

Time (s)

Fig. 5 Input schemes of steam flow rate

Fig. 3 Calculated and experimental results of response of

drum pressure to variations in steam flow rate

stream of 12,600 s and in the vicinity of 20,000 s are related to

system noise in the experiments and therefore are not presented by
the present computational procedure.

600

the outer wall temperature oscillates within 4.8 K before stabilizing at the steady state value but also reflect the variations in the
steam quality as it affects the heat transfer coefficient. The increase in temperature on the inner wall occurs at a rate of about
110 K/h, and on the outer wall, at an approximate rate of 170 K/h.
The rate of change on the outer wall is comparable to that of a
typical start-up operation, which was estimated at 167 K/h for the
drum inlet 19. The present temperature change occurred at the
steady state temperature of 545 K, while the typical start-up occurred at 360 K. Furthermore, the temperature rise in this case is
very low to cause any kind of thermal shock. The next question to
be considered is how the different swing rates affect the stress
distribution in the riser tube and the service life of this component.
Figure 8 presents the effective stresses at the inner and outer
surfaces of the riser wall tube. These stresses are the combined
effects of the variations in the pressure and temperature across the
walls. The highest values of maximum stress 53.5 MPa and
stress range 6 MPa occur at the inner wall and are due to 40%
step rise. The stresses due to pressure are dominant in this transition zone about 80%. Even though the amplitude of the stress
cycle is low, the cycling of thermal and mechanical stresses even
with low amplitudes is always feared because they may cause
premature fatigue failure. The effect of the present stress reversals
on the fatigue life of the riser tube is examined in the following:
The stress amplitude is estimated at 3 MPa from the following:

a =

53.5 47.5
max min
=
2
2

The mean stress m is taken here as the steady state stress of 51.5
MPa. To include the mean stress effect for asymmetric cycles,

4600
5000

4550

4900
4800

Calculated Pressure
Experimental data

4500
P (kPa)

Pressure, kPa

4700
4600
4500

4400

4400
4300

4350

4200

4300

4100
4000
11000

step rise = 5%
step rise = 10%
step rise = 20%
step rise = 40%

4450

11500

12000

12500
Time, s

13000

13500

14000

Fig. 4 Calculated and experimental results close view of response of drum pressure to variations in steam flow rate

Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology

300

600

900

1200

1500

Time (s)

Fig. 6 Pressure profiles at the inner wall of the riser tube in

response to variations in steam flow rate

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538

54
53
Effective stress (MPa)

T (K)

537
536
step rise = 5%
step rise = 10%
step rise = 20%
step rise = 40%

535
534

52
51

step rise = 5%
step rise = 10%
step rise = 20%
step rise = 40%

50
49
48

533

47

300

600

900

1200

1500

300

600

Time (s)

a- Inner wall

1200

1500

a- Inner wall

547

30

546
Effective stress (MPa)

29.5

545
T (K)

900
Time (s)

544

step rise= 5%
step rise = 10%
step rise = 20%
step rise = 40%

543

29

step rise = 5%
step rise = 10%
step rise = 20%
step rise = 40%

28.5

28

542
541

27.5

300

600

900

1200

1500

Time (s)

300

600

900

1200

1500

Time (s)

b- Outer wall

b- Outer wall

Fig. 7 Temporal temperature profiles at inner and outer walls

in response to variations in steam flow rate

Fig. 8 Temporal combined pressure and thermal stress profiles at the inner and outer walls in response to variations in
steam flow rate

Goodmans approach 19 is used to estimate the equivalent stress

amplitude aeq

results show that the value of swing rate does not significantly
affect the stress level, especially in the region before the midwall
thickness.

aeq =

3
a
= 3.53 MPa
=
51.5
m
1
1
345
Sut

The ultimate strength Sut = 345 MPa of A 178 at room temperature

is used here because carbon steel strength is not affected by temperatures below 645 K 700 F 19.
The estimated stress amplitude is very low and is not expected
to cause any fatigue damage. The endurance limit for steels with
Sut less than 550 MPa 80 ksi and at temperatures less than 645 K
700 F is approximately 70 MPa 10 ksi 20. This will result in
a safety factor as high as 20.
As shown above, the stress variation in the riser tube due to
swing rate is not expected to result in tube failure, provided that
the boiler and tube were initially at steady state and that the
start-up and shutdown cycles were taken care of in the design of
the boiler system. Thus, the stress level caused by swing rates as
high as 40% may not be a limiting factor.
Figure 9 presents the wall temperature distribution at 10 s, 60 s,
and 120 s. These results show that the swing rate does not affect
the temperature distribution across the wall of the riser tube at the
initial stages; however, as the time progresses, the wall gains
higher temperatures for the higher swing rates, although the temperature distribution remains similar. Figure 10 presents the corresponding wall stress distributions at 10 s, 60 s, and 120 s. These
061301-6 / Vol. 132, DECEMBER 2010

4.3 Control Optimization. The influence of the optimization

of the control system on the effective stresses of the riser tube is
shown in Fig. 11. The two control systems are compared. The first
is the current control system. The second is developed in the
present work to provide minimal overshooting in the boiler operating parameters. The control used is given by Eq. 18 for fuel
flow rate, which is a proportional-integral-derivative PIDcontroller. Sensitivity to kqp, kqi, and kqd was conducted and the
optimized weighted control parameters are found as 300, 0.0179,
and 0, respectively, while the control parameters of the current
boiler are 60, 3, and 0, respectively. These parameters were evaluated based on the field measurements. The results of Fig. 11 show
that the stress fluctuation is minimized with the optimized control
system, making its effect on the life of the tube even less significant.

Conclusions and Remarks

This research paper presented a study on the effect of swing

rate on effective combined pressure-caused and thermally induced
stresses in riser tubes of drum boilers. The differential equations
describing dynamics of the drum boiler were integrated using a
MATLAB subroutine. Experimental field data were used for validating the subroutine results and a reasonable level of accuracy was
found. Different schemes for increasing the steam flow swing rate
were employed 8 5%, 4 10%, 2 20%, and 1 40%. The
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55

5%
10%
20%
40%
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

Effective stress (MPa)

T (K)

542
541
540
539
538
537
536
535
534

45
40
35
30
25

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

Radius, (r-ri)/(r-ro)

Radius, (r-ri)/(r-ro)

a- at10 seconds.

5%
10%
20%
40%

T (K)

544
542
540
538
536

Effective Stress (MPa)

a- at 10 seconds
546

5%
10%
20%
40%

50

55
45
40
35
30
25

534

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

Radius, (r-ri)/(ro-ri)

Radius, (r-ri)/(r-ro)

b- at 60 seconds

548
546
544
542
540
538
536
534

Effective Stress (MPa)

b- at 60 seconds

T (K)

5%
10%
20%
40%

50

5%
10%
20%
40%

55
5%
10%
20%
40%

50
45
40
35
30
25

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

Radius, (r-ri)/(ro-ri)

Radius, (r-ri)/(r-ro)

c- at 120 seconds

c- at120 seconds
Fig. 10 Wall stress distributions at 10 s, 60 s, and 120 s

Fig. 9 Wall temperature distributions at 10 s, 60 s, and 120 s

Nomenclature
heat transfer coefficient at the inner wall is evaluated using a
thermal model that includes the effects of convection evaporation
and nucleate boiling, and the pipe wall resistance is calculated for
estimating the temporal inner and outer wall temperatures. Both
the steam pressure and the riser tube inner and outer wall temperatures were introduced in a finite element model for finding the
effective combined stresses. The temperature distribution across
the wall of the pipe due to the swing rate values is similar at
different time stages, and the levels between the thermal stresses
at the inner and outer walls increase as the time progresses with
higher values of swing rate. The combined temperature- and
pressure-induced stress fluctuations in the riser tube due to swing
rate were found to be too low to result in a riser tube damage,
provided that the boiler and tube were initially at steady state and
that the start-up and shutdown cycles were taken care of in the
design of the boiler system. The proposed control strategy for
minimizing the overshoot temperature and stress responses was
found to be successful in reducing both the peak values and the
rise time.

Acknowledgment
The authors wish to acknowledge the support received from
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and Saudi
Aramco during this study.
Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology

Ar
CP
D
E
G
h

g
h fw
hf
hg
hs
hw
h fg
k
K
Q
dc
m
fw
m

riser pipe inner area m2

specific heat of metal kJ/kg C
diffusion coefficient m2 / s
modulus of elasticity, Eqs. 2325 kN/ m2
mass flux kg/ m2 s
specific enthalpy kJ/kg; heat transfer coefficient kW/ m2 C
gravitational acceleration m / s2
specific enthalpy of feedwater kJ/kg
specific enthalpy of saturated liquid water
kJ/kg
specific enthalpy of saturated water vapor
kJ/kg
specific enthalpy of steam leaving the boiler
kJ/kg
specific enthalpy of saturated water kJ/kg
specific condensation enthalpy h fg = hg h f
kJ/kg
dimensionless friction coefficient in the
downcomer-riser loop
thermal conductivity kW/mC
heat flow rate to the risers kW
downcomer mass flow rate kg/s
mass flow rate of feedwater supplied to the
drum kg/s
DECEMBER 2010, Vol. 132 / 061301-7

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Vst total volume of steam in the system m3

Vt total volume of the drum, downcomer, and
risers; Vt = Vst + Vwt m3
Vwd volume of water under the liquid level m3
Vwt total volume of water in the system m3
x steam quality

54

Stress (MPa)

53
52
51
Current Control
Optimized Control

50
49
48
47
0

300

600

900

1200

1500

Time (s)

a- Inner wall
30

Stress (MPa)

29.5
29

Greek Symbols
volume fraction of steam in the riser thermal
expansion coefficient
average volume fraction of steam in the riser
Poissons ratio
dynamic viscosity kg/ms
w saturated water density kg/ m3
s saturated steam density kg/ m3
l liquid phase density kg/ m3
v vapor phase density kg/ m3
l longitudinal stress kN/ m2
tangential stress kN/ m2
r radial stress kN/ m2

References

28.5

Current Control
Optimized Control

28
27.5
27
0

300

600

900

1200

1500

Time (s)

b- Outer wall

Fig. 11 Current and optimized controlled combined thermaland pressure-induced stresses for the 40% increase in steam
flow rate

s mass flow rate of steam exiting the boiler

m
kg/s
sd steam flow rate through the liquid surface in
m
the drum kg/s
r mass flow rate through riser kg/s
m
Nu Nusselt number
P drum pressure kPa
Pr Prandtl number
q heat flux kW/ m2
Re Reynolds number
ri riser pipe inner radius m
ro riser pipe outer radius m
td residence time of the steam in the drum s
T time s
Td residence time of the steam in the drum s
Ts riser tube steam temperature C
To riser tube outer wall temperature C
Ti riser tube inner temperature C
tm metal temperature C
ts steam saturation temperature C
R riser pipe radius m
V volume m3
Vd drum volume m3
Vdc downcomer volume m3
Vr volume of riser tubes m3

061301-8 / Vol. 132, DECEMBER 2010

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