Investigation of the effects of perturbation forces to buckling in internally pressurized torispherical pressure vessel heads

The object of this paper is to investigate the effects of perturbation forces to buckling in pressure vessel heads. The pressure vessel heads in concern are confined to torispherical geometry with thin walls. Perturbation forces can alter not only the critical load for buckling but the buckled shape as well. In this paper in addition to previously used perturbation model, three more different perturbation force configurations are applied to the knuckle of the vessel. Internally pressurized three-dimensional torispherical pressure vessel head model that is previously used in literature is constructed and finite element program ANSYS Workbench is used for the solutions. First of all eigenvalue solutions are performed for each model. Then nonlinear instability solutions are conducted to obtain more realistic instability pressure values. For the nonlinear analyses not only large deformation static analyses but also large deformation transient analyses are conducted. For nonlinear analyses, perfectly plastic material model is used. It is concluded that instability pressures obtained by transient analyses are closer to plastic pressure values by PWC and ASME TES criteria and perturbation models increase instability pressure and equivalent plastic strain values.