What is Stress Linearization?

The ASME Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code (BPVC) is an American Society of
Mechanical Engineers (ASME) standard that regulates the design and construction
of boilers and pressure vessels. These are real world working standards developed
for safety of vessels which were developed long time ago after several accidents and
causalities were happened. It is common pool for every vessel designer as well as
manufacturer across the world. As time passes, the vessel no longer simpler but the
complexity in terms of size & shape, welding connections, materials are being
observed.

Furthermore, stress assessment thorough finite element analysis tool is developed

and being used which allows to see stresses inside the vessel components.
Nowadays, Finite element analysis is no longer a magical tool which were used
earlier only in research labs.

Many industries have developed FEA software’s which are being used for design
validations & optimizations. Though the vessel calculations are performed with FEA
software’s, but analysing the stresses found in the pressure vessel is still difficult
task. It needs skills to identify high stress locations and justify the results,
furthermore the pressure vessel validation is performed with respect to ASME
guidelines. FEA tools gives different types of stresses in vessel which have different
safety implications.

This blog article explains, how the stress linearization tool works to separate various
stresses like membrane, bending & peak.

Stress classification Line:

A Stress Classification Line or SCL is a straight line running from the inside to
outside of a vessel. It is perpendicular to both inside and outside surfaces of the
vessel. In FEA, stresses are calculated at nodal points and SCL is passing through
these nodes. Thus, SCL tool takes stresses at each and every point along path and
segregates into different stress components like, membrane stress, bending stress,
membrane plus bending, peak and total stresses. These membrane and bending
stresses are developed on cross sections through the thickness of a component.
These sections are called stress classification planes (SCPs). SCPs are flat planes
that cut through a section of a component. Figure 1 presents the SCL & SCP on
nozzle shell junction component.
 Figure 1: Stress Classification Line & Stress Classification Plane

 Membrane Stress: Membrane stresses are nothing but average stress

across the thickness. Membrane stresses are always positive and it is difficult
to predict whether they are positive or negative as magnitude are provided but
directions are missing.
 Bending Stress: Bending stress is the linearly varying stress through the
thickness, which is difference in stresses from inside to outside surface.
 Membrane + Bending: As name suggest, these stresses are sum of
membrane and bending stresses.
 Peak stress: These stresses are highest stress found along the SCL. This is
also always positive but not necessarily higher than the membrane + bending
number. Peak stress is usually used to determine the fatigue life of the
components at respective SCLs.

Stress Categorization and Limits as Per ASME:

If you are doing stress assessment as per ASME, ASME VIII-2 chart Figure 5.1
provides the stress categorization and their respective allowable limits. Here,
stresses are further categorized as primary general membrane, primary local
membrane, primary bending, secondary membrane plus bending and peak stresses.
This table provides guides for maximum stresses allowed at various different
locations. It is used by most of vessel engineer and analyst to predict the component
pass or fail judgment.

Though the stress category are clearly mentioned in the chart but it is difficult to
interpret the stresses will lie in which category? As we know that membrane stress is
average stress but if you refer this table 5.1 of ASME, you might confuse with the
terminology and allowable limits used and hence the codes experience and correct
judgments are needed to qualify the components. Refer Figure 2 for stress
categorization and their limits as per table 5.1 of ASME section VIII-2.
 Figure 2: Stress Categorization and Equivalent Stress Limits

 Primary Stress: A normal or shear stress developed by the imposed loading

which is necessary to satisfy the laws of equilibrium of external and internal
forces and moments. The basic characteristic of a primary stress is that it is
not self-limiting. Primary stresses which considerably exceed the yield
strength will result in failure or at least in gross distortion.
o General primary membrane equivalent Stress (Pm): This stresses
are found away from junction and are compared with directly with
allowable limits.
o Local primary membrane equivalent Stress (PL): This stresses are
assumed to be at critical locations like junctions, supports, sudden
change in cross section, other geometric irregularity, etc. and are
compared with SPL (1.5*S). Limits are higher for local membrane due to
fact of, additional stresses will come due to irregular sections.
o Primary bending Stress (Pb) For example, for a vessel subject to
internal pressure with an elliptical head; Pm equivalent stresses occur
away from the head to shell junction, and PL and equivalent stresses
occur at the junction.
o
 Secondary stress: A normal stress or a shear stress developed by the
constraint of adjacent parts or by self-constraint of a structure. The basic
characteristic of a secondary stress is that it is self-limiting. Local yielding and
minor distortions can satisfy the conditions that cause the stress to occur and
failure from one application of the stress is not to be expected.
o Examples of secondary stress are a general thermal stress and the
bending stress at a gross structural discontinuity.
o
 Peak Stress: The basic characteristic of a peak stress is that it does not
cause any noticeable distortion and is objectionable only as a possible source
of a fatigue crack or a brittle fracture.
 o Examples of peak stress are: the thermal stress in the austenitic steel
cladding of a carbon steel vessel, the thermal stress in the wall of a
vessel or pipe caused by a rapid change in temperature of the
contained fluid, and the stress at a local structural discontinuity.

Examples of Stress Linearization

This paragraphs shows, how to perform the stress linearization for nozzle shell
junction, refer Figure 3.

Figure 3: Nozzle & Shell

1. Problem Definition: Consider the Nozzle Shell Junction problem. Here the nozzle
is welded to the cylinder, refer Figure 1. The materials and weld details should be
well defined prior to simulations.

2. Meshing: Quadratic (second order) fine and mapped mesh is used to capture the
geometry. It recommended that minimum 2 to 3 elements should presents across the
thickness of the components to capture the bending behaviour. The FEA results
accuracy depends on the meshing, sometimes mesh convergence and mesh
accuracy study is to be done prior to FE analysis.

3. Solution: After mesh model is ready, the next step is to apply loading & boundary
conditions. The load in present case is internal pressure as well as compensating
pressure at openings (of Nozzle & shell) and one end of the shell is fixed in all
DOF. You can either apply compensating pressure or close all the openings. The CP
will act at thrust pressure which compensate the effect of internal pressure at
openings. Furthermore, cylindrical constrained are more preferable than fixed
supports. Fixed support are more prone to localise stresses.
4. Results Validation: Once solution is converged, the next step is to extract the
results and to perform the validations. Validation can be performed by doing simple
sanity checks like hoop stress validations & if forces and moments are applied then
the reaction should have the same forces and moments at the support locations.

5. Stresses Extraction: FEA program calculates the stresses (normal stresses Sx,
Sy, Sz, & shear stresses Txy Tyz, Txz) at each and every nodes and compute with
von Mises stress theory which is more commonly used for ductile
materials. The Figure 2 shows the equivalent stress plots. The maximum stress is
present at the nozzle shell junction location. In order to consider the maximum
stresses, it is recommended that SCL should pass this high stress region.

Most of FEA software’s have provision for SCL or path creation. If you are using
ANSYS workbench, then you need to create the construction geometry and then
path. You can create this by right click on model (top of the tree in ANSYS
mechanical) and then construction geometry and define path. You can create path
either by selecting edge of by selection nodes or points of inner and outer surfaces.

It is better to have few (4 to 6) SCL instead one SCL at high stress location, the SCL
numbers are based on the number of components need to be assessed. If you are
validating whole pressure vessel, in such cases you will need SCL for each
components of the vessel. In addition to this, you will need few SCL at away from
junction due to the fact, SCL away from junction are general primary membrane
stress which is compared with one time allowable limits (1*S) while the SCL at the
junctions are general local membrane stress which is compared with (1.5 * s or SPL).

Figure 4: Equivalent (von Mises Stress)

6. SCL Creation: Figure 3 depicts SCL location which is taken at maximum stress
location i.e. nozzle shell junction which is straight line passing through inner and
outer surface of the shell.

Figure 5: SCL Path

7. Linearized Stress Results:

a. Linearized Equivalent Stress: Results for the respective path can be viewed in
the results section through Linearized stress for the SCL path. It shows linearized
equivalent stress plots and stress linearization graph. The linearized stress plot
legend shows minimum to maximum stress values across the SCL, refer Figure 4.

Figure 6: SCL Linearized Stress

When Linearized stresses are presented, but do you know how does it shows
stresses for respective path?

FEA program calculates the stresses values in global coordinates system and when
you import stress results for SCL, 6 stress components are read for each node on
the SCL. The stress components are aligned with the global coordinate system of
the model. The data for each node needs to be translated along the SCL coordinate
systems. Sometimes you prefer to have results in local coordinate system along
SCL, in that case, FEA program transfer data from global to local coordinate system.

(Sx, Sy, Sz, Txy, Tyz, Tzx) = (Sn, St, Sh, Tnt, Tnh, Tht) for each node

Global Coordinate System Local Coordinate System

b. Stress Linearized Graph: In stress linearization graph, horizontal axis shows the
thickness while vertical axis present stresses. Refer Figure 5 for stress linearization
graph of SCL. It represents various stress lines which are varying across the
thickness, stresses include membrane, bending, membrane plus bending, peak and
total stresses, etc. By seeing this graph you can easily figure out stress values and
its locations across the SCL. In addition to this, you can easily identify that, the
SCL is inclined or straight line based on thickness of the component at SCL location.
You can cross-check thickness at SCL with thickness mentioned in horizontal line of
graph.

Figure 7: Stress Linearization Graph 1

As discussed above, the peak stress is used to find out the fatigue life and
membrane & membrane plus bending are used to find out plastic collapse and
hence, graph with only membrane & membrane plus bending stresses is used to find
out the plastic collapse, refer Figure 6. If you are using ANSYS mechanical, then you
have provision to increase the number of points in graphs up to 47. It means you will
get stress values at 47 locations on the graphs. Generally, you should have stress
result at all the nodes across the SCL path (if you have 5 second order elements
across thickness, then you have 11 nodes for stress results), but ANSYS gives
results on additional data points by doing interpolation.

Figure 8: Stress Linearization Graph 2

8. Stress Assessment Table: Lastly, the stress assessment table is to be prepared.

Here, you can include SCL results for all the path. In present case, we took one SCL
at the junction and hence its stress outputs are local membrane stress and local
membrane plus bending stress which can be compared with SPL allowable limits. If
this SCL values are below SPL limit then, the design is safe if not then design
suggestion like local reinforcement pad are recommended. The SPL, allowable limit
on local primary membrane and local primary membrane plus bending is referred
from ASME Section VIII div.2 codes, which is larger of (1.5*S or Sy based on
satisfaction of ASME criteria)

You might have got the answer for this question too, why to perform stress
linearization? If not, then refer further below lines….

In case pressure vessel, we are interested to see not only the surface stresses but
also through the thicknesses, and furthermore, ASME codes provides allowable
stress for various stress components which we will get after doing stress
linearization’s.

References:

1. ASME BPVC Section VIII, Division 2, Part 5, design by analysis, Edition 2017