Stress Analysis and Optimization of Jacket Closure for a Vertical Jacketed Vessel Using Taguchi Design of Experiment

Jacketed pressure vessels are pressure vessels used for either heating or cooling the vessel. This type of pressure vessel is subjected to several loads under its operating conditions which generates maximum stress at the jacket closure. The maximum stress at the jacket closure affects the performance and life cycle of the jacketed vessel. The present study aims to optimize the jacket closure design to which minimum or a considerable amount of equivalent stress is generated. The numerical model of jacket closure was developed in Ansys Workbench in order to optimize the design of jacket closure. The Taguchi method with orthogonal L₂₇ array is adopted to experimentally analyze the effect of jacket closure thickness, closure angle, and closure radius. S/N ratio smaller-the-better is used to study the influence of these parameters on maximum equivalent stress-induced and to get the optimum design parameter set for jacket closure. ANOVA is used to find the parameter which affects the equivalent stress significantly. The prediction model of the maximum stress induced at the jacket closure has been developed and validated with the virtual experiments of stress analysis. The current study provides the pressure vessel industry a prediction model for the accurate selection of jacket closure design parameters without the need for trial experiments with various jacket closure materials. It was observed that jacket closure thickness has the maximum influence on the stress induced followed by jacket closure angle. However, inner closure radius has very less influence on the stress generated at the jacket closure.