Numerical investigation of pressure vessel using static and modal analyses

A large number of industrial application of pressure vessel can be found such as fluid storage vessels, chemical processing tanks, petrochemical plants, and many more. Due to continuous operation, pressure vessels are under constant effect of structural, thermal and vibrational loads. This may cause the pressure vessel to undergo severe structural deformation leading to structural damage. Hence, the safe design of pressure vessel requires proper selection of material. The present study examines the combined effects of pressure, thermal, and vibrational loads on the structural integrity of horizontal pressure vessel made from different materials such as structural steel, aluminium alloy, stainless steel, carbon steel, copper alloy, grey cast iron, and titanium alloy. Through static analysis, deformation, von-Mises strain, and von-Mises stress are determined, whereas modal analysis reveals the modal frequencies and associated mode shapes using Block Lancos method. As expected, the deformation and strain are the highest for aluminium alloy while it is the lowest for carbon steel. It is interesting to observe that titanium alloy have the lowest stress value. It is also interesting to observe that the large modal frequency is observed for the aluminium alloy material while the copper alloy material shows lowest modal frequency.