Calculators

Calculate various aspects of Ductile iron pipe design and specification.

In some situations, both below and above ground, it is necessary to install Ductile iron pipe on supports at designated intervals along a proposed pipeline. The Pipe on Supports calculator provides the designer with a way to determine support dimensions and the class of pipe needed to control beam deflection, beam stress and stress at supports.

In pipes with smooth walls, the friction losses are comparable. However, the actual inside diameters often vary. Thus, for a given flow, it may take more energy to pump water through two different pipe materials of the same nominal size, but with different inside diameters. This can translate into savings in energy over the lifetime of the pipeline by specifying the pipeline with the lower head loss.

The Hydraulic Analysis calculator shows how designers can take advantage of the typically larger than nominal inside diameter of Ductile iron pipe compared to other pipe materials. It also computes how that savings in pumping energy also saves in greenhouse gas emissions using an EPA resource based on the location of the project.

Ductile iron pipe has the most comprehensive series of performance based product standards in the pipe industry. Through AWWA’s A21 Committee on Ductile Iron Pipe and Fittings standards covering manufacture, design, fittings, joints, coatings and linings are regularly revised and updated to help designers specify economical Ductile iron pipelines.

The thickness design calculator follows the procedures in the AWWA standard “Thickness Design of Ductile Iron Pipe” (ANSI/AWWA C150/A21.50) to determine the most appropriate class of Ductile iron pipe to choose for a given project. The C150 standard provides the most conservative approach to pipe wall thickness design found in the water and wastewater pipeline industry and the Thickness Design calculator makes it easy to take advantage of the true value of Ductile iron pipe by doing the hard number crunching for you.

First published in 1984, Thrust Restraint Design for Ductile Iron Pipe presents design procedures for the restraint of thrust forces in buried Ductile iron piping systems. Based on the models presented in the companion Thrust Restraint brochure, this calculator has been developed for the convenience of the pipeline designer. This calculator can be used to determine the unit frictional force, unit bearing resistance, and required restrained length for the most common restrained joint designs.