TriVista presented an article in the Business Edge magazine edition 71 [February /March 2023] Page 31 on “Advanced Pressure Vessel Design using Finite Element Analysis.’ This magazine is produced by the Sussex Chamber of Commerce. Pressure vessels have demanding industrial codes covering design, manufacture, and alteration such as ASME VIII Division 1, ASME VIII Division 2, PD5500 and BS EN13445. Mr Wu of TriVista explained that two approaches were used in pressure vessel design: Design by code and Design by analysis. The ‘Design by code’ approach is widely used where the pressure vessel design falls clearly within the standard rules, but this approach has some limitations in that specialised design features may not be covered and designs also tend to be conservative as they are based on averaged stress.
Certain vessels may require customised design features that make the vessel complex or unusual relative to the ‘design by code’ rules. In these cases, the ‘Design by analysis’ approach codes (such as ASME VIII-Division 2) must be used together with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tools. Pressure vessels typically contain structural discontinuity regions that have the highest stresses. FE analysis can identify the stress concentrations of these vessel discontinuities and evaluate these stresses against the code criteria. The Design by Analysis approach also covers a wider range of failure modes such as fatigue, plastic deformation, creep etc.
TriVista now routinely provide pressure vessel analysis services using the ‘Design by Analysis’ approach with the FE analysis.
