Pipes are inseparable components of industrial facilities which produce all the products we use in our daily life. In this article, we talk about one of the relatively less known type of structures, pipe supports, which don’t get the attention they deserve as other structures but by no means less important, as they carry and hold pipes safely in their place. Although at first a pipe support system may look rather straightforward, a lot goes into designing and building them.

The loads that must be considered are:
• Dead Load – the weights of the piping insulation, any attached components and of course the pipe support structure itself.
• Live Load – Flowing fluids impose dynamic loads, vibrations, hammering effects, startup, pressure change effects to the pipes, which in turn need to be resisted by the support system. This includes fatigue resistance, as pipe supports are almost always made of steel and steel is prone to fatigue.
• Temperature Loads – When temperature changes, this causes expansion and contraction in any material, so it applies to both pipes and their supports. These loads and deformations must be adequately supported and absorbed by the support system.
• Seismic Loading – In areas with past seismic activity, the seismic effects must be considered. A pipe full of heavy liquid, can exert a lot of load to its supports, during seismic accelerations.
• Wind Loading – Wind also affect these support structures, although it is usually not a governing factor here.
The loads from all these effects must be well distributed to the supports, which not only must be able to carry but also need to maintain their structural stability.

Various considerations when designing pipe supports:
• First and foremost, pipe support geometry must be precisely coordinated with the pipes. The overall geometry of the support system should allow future maintenance operations, inspections and it must also be able to accommodate a certain degree of movement.
• Pipe diameter is also of great importance. As the pipe diameter grows, so does the complexity and cost of pipe support system.
• Pipe supports are almost always made of steel, whereas the pipe material can be made of plastic, steel or composite material. The properties of materials of both pipes and supports have huge impact on the design.
• Rigid and flexible supports are used together as required. Bellows or expansion loops are often used, to accommodate excessive movements and vibrations as a result of loads. A pipe support system has a greater variety of supports such as fixed, hinge, spring, roller, hanger. These are used in proper places to accommodate the required movements and rotations, which can happen along and around any axes, which means we usually deal with greater degrees of freedom here than an ordinary structure.
• In addition to supports, vibration and isolation dampers are also frequently used. Resonance between the causes of vibration and the natural vibration period of the structure should also be avoided. The vibrations can cause from machinery, flow of fluid, or seismic effects.
• To withstand seismic vibrations and forces, seismic dampers, bracings are used.
• Sagging must be prevented, which is one of the main factors that determine the spacing of supports.
• Pipe support systems are most often made of steel, and this time the steel is not covered in building materials as in a building. Therefore we must take precautions to protect steel from environmental effects especially water and (being in industrial setting) chemicals which would cause corrosion. Measures include special painting, coating and galvanizing. Still, the design should allow for corrosion in the long term.
• Pipe supports may fail in many ways (failure modes). In addition to overloading ,relatively more critical modes here are structural stability (which includes buckling), fatigue.
• As in any structure, we must ensure continuous and as regular as possible load paths from the pipes towards the foundation. Irregularities should be avoided.

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