Support

The importance of pipe support has long been underestimated, and as service conditions have risen, this has led to an increasing number of technical and economic setbacks.

While the term "support" originally covered only devices designed to limit stresses and strains in piping systems, the term has now been extended to cover all devices designed to maintain stresses, anchor forces and strains, whatever their origin, at an acceptable level.

In this article, we will therefore use the term support in its most general sense, specifying functions where necessary, using the terms support-weight, support-earthquake, and so on.

It's easy to imagine, then, that given the role played by support systems in regulating stresses and, consequently, forces, any faulty design or implementation could lead to major functional problems, such as loss of tightness in a set of flanges, cracking of tubing, or untrimming of rotating machine couplings.