FSA Environmental Awards Entry

Participating Team and Introduction:

General Rubber Corp. – FSA Member

850 Washington Ave.
Carlstadt, NJ 07072
Ph: 1-800-233-MAXI, 1-201-935-1900, Fax: 1-201-935-1915
www.general-rubber.com
Lloyd B. Aanonsen, P.E. – lloyda@general-rubber.com

General Rubber Corp. is a leading manufacturer of Expansion Joints for piping and
ducting systems, in addition to; Vibration Connectors, Rubber Flanged Pipe, Penetration
Seals, and Pinch Valves. Established in 1950 and ISO-9001:2000 certified, General
Rubber has a commitment to quality and product innovation that is unsurpassed in the
industry.

Morex, Inc. – Customer

1609 Cross Beam Drive
Charlotte, NC 28217
Ph: 1-704-423-0102, Fax: 1-704-423-0320
www.morexinc.com
Albert Isaac – aisaac@morexinc.com

Morex Inc. services the Middle East and has a reputation for supplying and supporting
the best-engineered products in the industry. They have many affiliate offices in the
region and will coordinate large complicated projects from start to finish. They work
closely with contractors, engineers, end users and manufacturers and have developed a
reputation as being a leader in their field.

Case Overview:

Ras Laffan Common Cooling Water Project is a $350 Million mammoth industrial
project in the Middle East. It took over 3-years to build and has a capacity 1.32 Million
GPM. It is the main source of cooling water to a whole industrial complex. It has a
complicated network of large diameter fiberglass reinforced piping that distributes the
cooling water. The piping detail in Illustration-1 and photos in Illustrations-2, 3 & 4 give
some idea of the project’s size and complexity. Morex, Inc. contacted General Rubber
Corp. in early 2002 to work with their customer, the design engineer, regarding the use of
rubber expansion joints on this project. Each valve location required a dismantling joint
and the thermal movement requirement for the fiberglass-reinforced pipe was also high.
Nearly 100 large rubber expansion joints in sizes 60”(DN 1500) to 144”(DN 3600) were
incorporated throughout the system.

Designing the expansion joint to compress 2-3/8”(60mm) on itself, functioning as a

dismantling joint, while also accepting the large thermal movements in the system proved
to be the simpler task. The harder task was to design these very large parts for a test
pressure of 200psi(13.5bar). This pressure is nearly 4-times the maximum value used in
the FSA Technical Handbook appendix C, for the largest size. General Rubber had the
engineering experience and felt comfortable with the challenge. The challenge would be
to significantly increase the performance features of our product on the single largest
contract our company had taken to date, totaling over $1.5 Million. Both Albert Isaac and
Lloyd Aanonsen made a trip to Japan to finalize the design with the engineer. Morex and
General Rubber made trips to the job site as well. Lloyd Aanonsen inspected the
installation and experienced the 120° F desert environment. He was even able to retain
most of his body’s water weight, albeit in his shirt (Illustration-5).

Once the engineer inspected our manufacturing facility in Tucson, AZ and agreed with
our experience and capability claims, we were instructed to proceed. This was a big
project for us and required vast facility upgrades. The expansion joint design would also
have to be finalized. The flange design and higher sealing requirement would be our
primary focus. We understood that we could reinforce the body to handle the high
pressure, however the limitation to our previous design has always been leakage at the
flange. We took the opportunity to review other flange designs that we had experience
with, before developing a new one for this project. It was clear that different flange
designs had different advantages and disadvantages. Our goal was to take the best
features from various designs and develop a new and optimal design.

We first reviewed a solid floating flange design as shown in Illustration-6. The solid
metal floating flange has a pressure point that concentrates sealing force on a small
focused area on the rubber stub flange. This provides a great seal and minimizes the
required bolt torque. For large flanges, the solid floating metal flanges are difficult to
machine and hard to handle. Most concerning however, is that when they are subject to
large movements, the rubber stub flange can pull out from between the solid floating
flange and mating flange. This results in a catastrophic failure and the devastating
consequences are magnified for larger pipe. Obviously a design we weren’t willing to
choose for our project and felt was better suited for Vibration Connectors only.

We then looked at the flange design that utilizes an embedded steel ring in the rubber
stub flange as shown in Illustration-7. This design was developed as a solution to the
flange pullout problem mentioned above. Unfortunately, in the attempt to solve one
problem, it caused a number of other equally serious problems. For this design to
function, a sophisticated split-floating flange is needed. The split-floating flange
incorporates a pivot fulcrum that must engage the mating flange. The fulcrum would first
have to allow the rubber stub flange to compress and then engage itself against the pipe-
mating flange. Once engaged, a rotational effect is required to concentrate sealing force
on to the embedded ring area. Unfortunately, with so many different pipe flange types,
engagement is difficult to predict. This design does not have a pressure point and so the
sealing force is distributed over a larger area than the above design. This requires
significantly greater bolt torque. More concerning however, is that the sharp edge of the
embedded ring often cuts the reinforcing plies resulting in a different, but no less
catastrophic, flange failure. This inefficient and un-safe design should be avoided in
most applications.

For both of the above designs, a rubber stub flange is utilized. Rubber stub flanges
require all the reinforcing plies to be wrapped around the embedded ring or cable and
doubled back onto the body. This effectively halves the expansion joint’s body thickness
available for additional plies and other reinforcing materials needed for higher design
pressures. Besides the un-safe aspects of the above designs, we concluded that it was also
doubtful that we could develop the needed body strength in the limited space.

We have always liked the traditional industrial full rubber flange design used in our
Maxi-Joints and other spool type expansion joints. This design, as shown in Illustration-
8, facilitates multiple layers of tire cord and high tensile steel reinforcement in the body.
All the tire cord layers can easily extend from the body up to the flange OD without
having to be doubled back onto the body. The drawback to this design, however, has
always been the large bolt torque required to seal the flange. This results in a relatively
low pressure rating for the part as a whole. The body can easily be designed for higher
pressures, however the flange would always leak. Typically a flat retaining ring would
press against the full flat rubber flange. The sealing area is large, so the bolt torque
required is also large. From geometry, we can also see that the flange area above the bolt
circle is less than the flange area below the bolt circle. The rubber flange is compressible
and when the retaining ring is torqued down, it tends to rotate in an adverse direction
toward the flange OD. In this situation, after a point, the more torque you apply, the
more the joint will leak. This is why expansion joint manufactures have typically
suggested torquing bolts until the “rubber flange bulges slightly”, and not use this design
for higher working pressures. Even at lower pressures, the rubber flange would
experience compression set, requiring periodic retorquing of the bolts. For low-pressure
condenser and circulating water power plant applications, this design is adequate. We
concluded, however, that it would not be adequate for our Ras Laffan project.

General Rubber developed a new design that would take advantage of the pressure point
feature of the solid floating flange of Illustration-6, and implemented it in with the full
rubber flange design of Illustration-8. The new flange design shown in Illustration-9,
incorporates a bulb in the retaining ring. The bulb focuses a sealing force on a relatively
small area beneath the bolt circle of the rubber flange. The bolt torque is minimized and
higher-pressure rating can be achieved. The new design also does not require periodic
retorquing of the bolts. By the end of 2002 we were in full production and completed the
job in April of 2003 as seen in Illustrations-10 & 11.

The new flange design has been incorporated in a wide range of General Rubber
products, including our Maxi-Joint series of expansion joints and the Non-Plug Valve
series of pinch valves. Through testing we have found that the new design requires half
the bolt torque that the flat-faced design required for the same test pressure. Pressure
ratings that were previously un-obtainable are now obtainable. Flange leakage and the
maintenance intensive task of periodic retorquing of the bolts are also no longer concerns.
The full environmental, economic and energy savings benefits of this simple but
significant flange development can be extraordinary.
ILLUSTRATION - 1

ILLUSTRATION - 2
ILLUSTRATION - 3

ILLUSTRATION - 4
ILLUSTRATION – 5
ILLUSTRATION - 10

ILLUSTRATION - 11