Use of Stress-Strength Model in Determination of Safety Factor for Pressure Vessel Design

Abstract

In pressure vessel design, the values of safety factor are still determined on the basis of engineering experience. Thus, they cannot properly reflect the influence of the consequences of failure and the variabilities in stress and strength. As a result, designsare often excessively conservative, while on the other hand, the possibility of failure still exists. Two approaches for determining the value of the safety factor, which are based on reliability analysis, are presented in this paper. As a result of a comparison, one approach based on a stress-strength model is found to be appropriate for pressure vessel design practice. By transforming the interference parts of the distributions of stress and strength into equivalent normal distributions, the approach allows stress and strength to have arbitrary distributions. Three examples, one in which a vessel is subjected to internal pressure, one in which a tall vessel is subjected to combined loads, and one in which a vessel is subjected to external pressure, are given in the paper. From threexamples, the principles for determining target reliability and the factors affecting the safety factor are discussed. It is concluded that by using the approach presented in this paper for pressure vessel design, different consequences of failure as well as variabilities in stress and strength can be taken into account. The approach yields a value for the safety factor that leads to a design which will be safer and yet more economical.