This paper on "Structural Interaction Analysis of Heat Exchanger Steam Drum Shell and Internals Using ANSYS and ABAQUS" was presented at the NAFEMS World Congress on Effective Engineering Analysis - 25-28 April 1999, Newport, Rhode Island, USA.

Summary

A structural analysis of a heat exchanger steam drum and intervals was performed to assess the adequacy and functionality of the heat exchanger in the event of disengaged fasteners.
A three-dimensional finite element model was constructed using Patran and Pro/Engineer to evaluate the interaction between a heat exchanger steam drum shell and the internal assembly. Due to the complexity of the interaction and the original nature of the analysis, two independent organizations using different finite element codes (ANSYS and ABAQUS) performed the evaluation.
It was recognized that the intricate nature of the internals as well as the large number of fasteners would limit the complexity of the model due to computer space and memory consumption. Consequently, a 3-D model of the steam drum was generated using 4-node shell elements (as opposed to 8-node solid or shell elements) and three dimensional beam elements for all bolts, fasteners, housings and stiffener brackets which attached the internals to each other and the pressure boundary. The beam elements are selected for their ability to support axial and lateral forces as well as in-plane and out-of-plane bending loads. The model as generated consisted of over 15,000 nodes with approximately 90,000 degrees of freedom. Analyses were run on either VAX or NT Workstations.