Guidelines for Seismic Design and Analysis of Pressure Vessels

Abstract

An adequate design of pressure vessels, also for seismic actions, is crucial in particular if due to hazardous content the consequences of failure may become very severe. While very detailed and specific seismic design rules for structural buildings are provided by several codes, such rules are missing for pressure vessels. This paper describes the results of a study on seismic performance and applicability of existing European and American codes to pressure vessels with cylindrical and spherical shapes and provides a comparison of design outcomes according to these codes. The investigations were performed for different case studies of existing pressure vessels which were selected to be representative for the current practice. The studies comprised numerical investigations as well as simplified models for the estimation of the dynamic properties of the vessel structures. The applicability of behaviour factors was discussed based on proposals made by European and American codes, so that finally recommendations for the behaviour factor of pressure vessels with different shapes and types of supports have been developed based on pushover analyses and non-linear incremental dynamic analyses.