Piping engineers are continuously faced with problems involving thermal movement, instability, limiting forces on equipment, and absorption of vibrations. The piping design must balance the economics of pipe loops and offsets, space, and fabrication against the cost of expansion joints.

Bellows Systems has made piping engineers lives easier by providing cost-effective, engineered bellows and expansion joint solutions for their piping designs. Its Kopperman Division established in 1894 is one of the oldest manufacturers of expansion joints.

Piping bellows and expansion joints may be used to absorb direct axial expansion or contraction, to absorb equipment vibration, to provide limitation of forces applied to critical equipment and to improve line stability through reduction and control of loads on pipelines.

We offer a complete lineup of piping expansion joint design options and standard sizes ranging from as small as 1” to 48” pipe OD. We can fabricate bellows from single-ply wall thickness of 0.004” to 0.072” and multi-ply designs with up to 6 layers for different pressure classes and vibration loading. Our high-pressure expansion joints can optionally be constructed with root reinforced bellows designs with integral root rings or equalizing rings