Design and Static Structural Analysis of Pressure Vessel using Finite Element Technique

Abstract

A pressure vessel is a closed container which is designed to accommodate gases and liquids at a high operating pressures and temperatures differs from the atmospheric conditions. The top of the pressure vessel end capsis fitted to the cylindrical body known as heads. The purpose of this investigation is to compute detailed design & analysis of boiler Pressure vessel used for appropriate design parameters and operating parameters such as thickness and temperature distribution respectively using FEA tool ANSYS.

 ‘Finite Element Analysis’ is an analytical tool used to carry out the static stress analysis. In this method the geometric model of the pressure vessel is divided into small elements. Loads and constraints are applied to the FEA model at desired locations. Several material properties are applied to the Model such as material type, real constants like area, thickness, volume, density etc. The meshed model is therefore analysed in FEA solver. Finally the obtained results will be captured in the form of flow contours in order to understand the physical phenomenon. This study involves design of a axi-symmetrical pressure vessel to withstand 0.1 MPa pressure and figured out the optimum wall thickness required to limit the maximum yield stresses. A design tool CATIA V5 R19 is used to generate geometrical model and Ansys Fluent is used to create finite element model (meshed model) Ansys workbench supports the simulation in static structural and thermal analysis.