Metal Expansion Joints for HVAC applications

Senior Flexonics engineers, manufactures, and markets metal expansion joints and is recognized as the leader in the expansion joint industry. Our global leadership has been earned through consistent application of solid engineering principles, stringent quality standards, and product innovation to produce safe and reliable metal expansion joints for all types of HVAC applications. As a further part of our leadership, we invite people to learn from our extensive online learning center.

Metal Expansion Joints

All materials expand and contract with thermal change. In the case of piping systems, this dimensional change can produce excessive stresses throughout the piping system and at fixed points such as vessels and rotating equipment, as well as within the piping itself. A practical and cost effective means of achieving piping system flexibility in a compact design is through the application of metal expansion joints. The most efficient piping system is the shortest and most directly routed system and metal expansion joints make this possible. Metal expansion joints provide an excellent solution for isolation of settlement, seismic deflection, mechanical vibration and sound attenuation.

Designing of Bellows:

Metal bellows are manufactured from relatively thin-walled tubing to form a corrugated cylinder. The corrugations, commonly referred to as convolutions, add the structural reinforcement necessary for the thin-wall material to contain system pressure. The bellows designer selects the thickness and convolution geometry to produce a bellows design that approaches, and often exceeds the capacity of the adjoining pipe to contain system pressure at the specified design temperature.

Flexibility of the bellows is achieved through bending of the convolution sidewalls, as well as flexing within their crest and root radii. In most cases, multiple convolutions are required to provide sufficient flexibility to accommodate the expected expansion and contraction of the piping system. Visit the Piping Flexibility Section in our online Learning Centre.