Finite Element Modeling of Stability of Beam-Column Supports for Field Fabricated Spherical Storage Pressure Vessels - Engineering

ENG > Vol.5 No.5, May 2013

Finite Element Modeling of Stability of Beam-Column Supports for Field Fabricated Spherical Storage Pressure Vessels ()

HTML

Download as PDF (Size: 222KB) PP. 475-480

DOI: 10.4236/eng.2013.55057 5,212 Downloads 7,709 Views Citations

Author(s)

Oludele Adeyefa, Oluleke Oluwole

Affiliation(s)

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.

ABSTRACT

Spherical pressure vessels in large sizes are generally supported on legs or columns evenly spaced around the circumference. The legs are attached at or near the equator of the sphere. This research work focussed on flexural-torsional buckling of beam-column supports of field fabricated spherical pressure vessels using finite element analysis. Flexuraltorsional buckling is an important limit state that must be considered in structural steel design and it occurs when a structural member experiences significant out-of-plane bending and twisting. This research has therefore considered the total potential energy equation for the flexural-torsional buckling of a beam-column element. The energy equation was formulated by summing the strain energy and the potential energy of the external loads. The finite element method was applied in conjunction with the energy method to analyze the flexural-torsional buckling of beam-column supports. To apply the finite element method, the displacement functions are assumed to be cubic polynomials, and the shape functions used to derive the element stiffness and element geometric stiffness matrices. The element stiffness and geometric stiffness matrices were assembled to obtain the global stiffness matrices of the structure. The final finite element equation obtained was in the form of an eigenvalue problem. The flexural-torsional buckling loads of the structure were determined by solving for the eigenvalue of the equation. The resulting eigenvalue equation from the finite element analysis was coded using FORTRAN 90 programming language to aid in the analysis process. To validate FORTRAN 90 coding developed for the finite element analysis and the methodology, the results given by the software were compared to existing solutions and showed no significant difference P > 0.05.

KEYWORDS

Field-fabricated; Spherical Storage Pressure Tank; Beam-Column Support; FEM

Share and Cite:

O. Adeyefa and O. Oluwole, "Finite Element Modeling of Stability of Beam-Column Supports for Field Fabricated Spherical Storage Pressure Vessels," Engineering, Vol. 5 No. 5, 2013, pp. 475-480. doi: 10.4236/eng.2013.55057.

Journals Menu

Follow SCIRP

	+1 323-425-8868
	customer@scirp.org
	+86 18163351462(WhatsApp)
	1655362766

	Paper Publishing WeChat

Journals Menu

Home

About SCIRP

Service

Policies