The paper presents issues of thermal and static structural analysis of a special heat exchanger with U-tubes. This heat exchanger serves for preheating of process waste gas (PWG) by flue gas. Operating of this preheater is connected with unexpected difficulties (tubes plucking from a tube sheet). Therefore; the significant part of paper discusses damage causes of heat exchanger tubes and their calculation possibilities. Substantial part of paper is also devoted to discussion of used computational models, boundary conditions and results of applied thermal and structural analyses.