Term of Award

Fall 2018

Degree Name

Master of Science in Applied Engineering (M.S.A.E.)

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Committee Chair

Aniruddha Mitra

Committee Member 1

Mosfequr Rahman

Committee Member 2

Marcel Ilie

Abstract

Tall structures, installed in the open air are prone to wind load. Depending on the geometry of the structure, its support at the ground level and the intensity of the wind, the wind load analysis can be a significant factor from the safety point of view. Especially, in case of a pressure vessel, such as a water tank or any chemical container. In the current study, only the effects of vibration on these structures have been focused. Several factors influence the lateral natural frequency of the structure. The aspect ratio (height versus width), nature of support at the base, supporting leg lengths and their counts, the geometry of the leg supports, the mass of the vessel, are some influencing factors. Supporting legs are designed based on the compressive and buckling failures, and standard tube structures have been adopted. Aspect ratios considered here varies as 2, 3, and 4 which confirms most of the practical applications. There are several cases in the past where the vortex shedding frequency under steady wind velocity came close to the natural frequency of the structure and caused failure. Hence, in this study, we tried to predict the critical wind speed for which structure is prone to failure due to the resonating condition. The vortex shedding frequency depends on the steady wind speed, equivalent diameter of the pressure vessel and Strouhal and Reynolds numbers. Our analysis was carried out using SolidWorks and ANSYS. The results can be used as a guideline for the design of pressure vessel installed in the open air to avoid the resonating effect. For a case study, mechanical analysis of a provided design for a pressure vessel from the Johnson and Matthey Process Technologies in Savannah, Georgia, was done for this research. Several models for the pressure vessel were devised and then compared by considering the cost, construction, accessibility, and sustainability. The analysis is focused on the strength of the support system as well as the stability of the pressure vessel itself under severe conditions. First, the analysis was based on the structural integrity of the of these supporting load cells under the fully loaded condition. Then the study was focused on the dynamic stability of the of the pressure vessel under constant wind load. Finally, these results are compared to show the consistency.

OCLC Number

1085541957

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

Download

Share

COinS