Thermal Analysis on the Shell Stiffeners of Double Steel Wall LNG Storage Tank

Abstract

Shell stiffeners are used effectively to prevent preferential local buckling of LNG tank shell. In this paper, Finite element method (FEM) is applied to pay attention to the thermal analysis on the shell stiffeners of double steel wall LNG storage tank. The structural requirements according to British Standard 7777-2:1993 has been considered and then some dimensional adjustments of shell stiffeners are made to evaluate their influence on the thermal field of double steel wall LNG storage tank. Temperature distributions and heat flux of different dimensional shell stiffeners are presented. Though the analysis of results, it puts forward the conclusion that the dimensional design of shell stiffeners used in double steel wall LNG storage tank shall take not only the structural design requirements but also the thermal design ones into consideration in order to finally save cost in both construction and normal operation.