Design : 2 : Shell (External Pressure)

External pressure can be due to internal negative Pressure, or external loading like wind, earthquake etc. or live load, snow load etc.

One can design Pressure vessel for either sever combination of various load or for most possible occurrence of load combination.

Load combinations are given in respective ‘Building Code’ like API, UBC, IS etc.

Yes, If you noticed I’ve said ‘Building Code’, why? as most of these loading decides how the pressure vessel, and if it fails, it can harm the occupants. hence design of such loading will be governed by building codes.

These Building code will give su way to calculate loading on tank/vessel, and then our design code like ASME, BS,EN will tell us how to derive the thickness from them.

one should note that, nearly all the design code talks about +ve Internal pressure & -Ve internal pressure & its design rules, but none of the code talk about how to do thickness calculation for the loads specified above.

In latest edition of ASME it does talk about these loading, and ask user to use Engineering practices to calculate loadings (UG-22), loading listed in this sections are
(a) internal or external design pressure (as defined in UG-21);
(b) weight of the vessel and normal contents under operating or test conditions;
(c) superimposed static reactions from weight of attached equipment, such as motors, machinery, other vessels, piping, linings, and insulation;
(d) the attachment of:
(1) internals (see Appendix D);
(2) vessel supports, such as lugs, rings, skirts, saddles, and legs (see Appendix G);
(e) cyclic and dynamic reactions due to pressure or thermal variations, or from equipment mounted on a vessel, and mechanical loadings;
(f) wind, snow, and seismic reactions, where required;
(g) impact reactions such as those due to fluid shock;
(h) temperature gradients and differential thermal expansion;
(i) abnormal pressures, such as those caused by deflagration;
(j) test pressure and coincident static head acting during the test (see UG-99).

In next section, we will discuss how to calculate final thickness of a vessel considering all loadings