A global buckling analysis of a pressure vessel associated with connections between main cylinder and flat plate ends

ABSTRACT

In order to evaluate the structural safety of the pressure vessel, it is necessary to consider the failure of the connection part, together with the cylindrical part in the middle and both ends, where the initial large deflection occurs. In this paper, local structural analysis for the pressure vessel considering the bolted part was carried out as well as global buckling analysis. That is, aluminium alloy and stainless steel pressure vessel models were designed for operating under high pressure equivalent to the water depth up to 2000 and 1000 m, respectively. Pressure vessel design procedure was performed by using empirical formulae and eigenvalue analysis by an FEM code. The results were verified and investigated by pressure tests in the hyperbaric chamber of KRISO. It was found that all the estimated results by the empirical formula and FEA are overestimated when the results are compared to the pressure test results in the pressure chamber.

KEYWORDS:

• Deep-sea pressure vessel
• connection (bolting) part
• buckling analysis
• Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
• large deformation
• elasto-plastic deformation
• external pressure test
• hyperbaric chamber

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from endowment project of ‘Development of technology for evaluation of underwater safety performance of search and rescue equipment' funded by Korea Research Institute of Ships & Ocean Engineering [PES3140].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.