Effects of geometric and material nonlinearity on the stresses of various pressure vessel dome shapes

Abstract

Pressure vessels are usually designed and analyzed by the linear elastic theory assuming small deformations. If the internal pressure is large enough to cause the vessel stress to exceed the yield stress or to cause large deformation, the stress from the material and/or geometric nonlinear analyses may be different from that of the linear analysis. In this paper, the effects of the material and geometric nonlinearity on the stress of various dome shapes were analyzed to find the best analysis methods for each dome shape. The geometric nonlinear effects were large for very thin general torispherical domes, and the material nonlinear effects were large thick hemispherical and optimum torispherical domes, and most of the general torispherical domes.