This paper is concerned with hazards related to potential tube
rupture in heat exchangers in the process plants and the importance
of properly designing protective systems to deal with such
events. Shell-tube type heat exchangers are often used to exchange
heat between a high-pressure fluid and a low-pressure fluid, and
the pressure difference between the two fluids could be significantly
high. If the difference in the design pressure between the
low-pressure (LP) and high-pressure (HP) sides is greater than that
covered by the 10/13th rule, dynamic analysis is required to ascertain
that the maximum surge pressure that could be reached due to
different scenarios of tube rupture does not compromise the
integrity of the LP side of the exchanger. Typically the LP side is the
shell-side, which contains a low-pressure liquid (e.g. cooling water