I was asked today about the use of a SolidWorks simulation product called Pressure Vessel Design, as the name suggests, a tool used regularly in the design of pressure vessels. Typically there are a number of different loadcases on a storage vessel, from internal gas or liquid pressures, self weight of the vessel, bending moments and forces exerted by the connecting pipes, and even temperature distributions.
As you would expect, all of these loadings might apply at the same time, and so a typical design code (like the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code supported by SolidWorks simulation) requires these separate loadcases to be combined in some way.
In fact, in SolidWorks Simulation you can factor the results from each separate loadcase and sum them linearly, or perform an SRSS (Square Root Sum of Squares) to combine them.
Having defined the combination method, simply run the study and hey bingo, you are ready to check your membrane and bending stresses against the limits set by your code.
But the neat thing about this tool is that you can apply this technique to any relevant model, it doesn’t have to be a pressure vessel. Whatever your model, if you want to create separate loadcases and superpose them at the end, just use the Pressure Vessel Design tool!
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