Determining Burst Strength of Thin and Thick-Walled Pressure Vessels Through Parametric Finite Element Analysis

Abstract

Abstract Previous work on pressure vessel (PV) burst strength established a numerical technique for determining the more accurate Zhu-Leis burst strength from the pressure-Mises stress curve provided by finite element analyses (FEA). That work was not applied to capture the burst strength for thick-walled pipes. Recent analytical developments have resulted in a thick-walled Zhu-Leis burst strength solution. This work examines this solution using FEA calculations. To do so, the FEA stress was measured at multiple points through the wall thickness of the PV and compared to the analytical thick-walled solution to determine the best measurement location through the thickness. To further examine the burst pressure for different vessel sizes and materials, we developed a parametric code, using the Abaqus Python application programming interface, to rapidly iterate over 60 different combinations of geometries and material properties. This code also extracted stress data from the FEA results and analyzed the numerical pressure-Mises stress curves to find the critical point corresponding to the Zhu-Leis burst pressure. A linear regression model was developed which can very accurately predict the PV burst pressure. This regression model applies over a range of pipeline steels from grade B to X80, and diameter-to-thickness (D/t) ratios from 6 to 120.