U.S. Bellows designed and manufactured customized single-ply X-Flex® bellows for the world’s largest manufacturer and supplier of flooring products, with facilities located throughout the United States. Flooring products—including carpet, ceramic tile, natural stone, laminate, vinyl, and hardwood—require many of the same piping systems found in traditional industrial plants such as automotive, food processing, semiconductor, textile, and pulp and paper facilities.
Flooring manufacturing plants are typically very large, often spanning extensive tracts of land. As a result, pipe runs can extend hundreds of feet, necessitating the use of expansion joints to accommodate thermal movement and relieve stresses within the piping systems.
Externally pressurized expansion joints are particularly well suited for applications requiring large amounts of axial compression or extension. In these designs, the bellows elements are configured so that the process media flows along the external surface of the bellows. This external pressurization eliminates pressure instability as a design limitation and allows for the absorption of significant axial movement.
For this application, the expansion joints were fabricated with 304 stainless steel bellows, flanges, and pipe. The units were designed for operating temperatures up to 300°F at ±14.7 psig (full vacuum) and were capable of accommodating up to 8 inches of axial movement. The assemblies included 3-inch pipe by 40-inch-long units and 4-inch pipe by 40-inch-long units.
All expansion joints were hydrostatically tested and subjected to non-destructive examination (NDE) quality control inspections, including liquid penetrant examination (LPE), prior to shipment to ensure compliance with performance and quality requirements.
