Stress Analysis in Thin-Walled Pressure Vessels Using Theoretical, Numerical and Experimental Analysis

Pressure vessels are widely used equipment in several industries, and can operate at high pressure and temperature, which can cause major accidents in the event of a failure. The objective of this work is to analyze the behavior of longitudinal and circumferential stresses at three specific points on the wall of a pressure vessel, two distant points of geometric discontinuity (at the top and side) and one close to geometric discontinuity (at the intersection of the top and the connection) through theoretical, numerical and experimental analyses. The pressure vessel in this work is a piece of equipment used on offshore oil platforms and is part of a natural gas dehydration system. The results showed that the longitudinal and circumferential stresses at the intersection of the top and the connection were higher than the stress values at the top and side for the experimental and numerical analyses, due to the emergence of bending stresses in regions of geometric discontinuity. Another important point was the good correlation of the results between the experimental and numerical analyses using the FEM in the ANSYS software, showing that this methodology is a powerful and reliable tool in the analysis of stresses in pressure vessels.