Study on Design Approach for Tall Pressure Vessels With Intermediate Support in Consideration of Bottom Structure Flexibility

The skirt and shell thicknesses of vertical tall pressure vessels are sometimes much increased in FPSO (Floating Production, Storage and Offloading) due to ship motion acceleration. In that case, intermediate support is used as an additional support from steel structure surrounding the vessels. By theoretical calculation, Nanjo et.al. introduced dimensionless parameter N that can represent stiffness of pressure vessel and acceleration load with the assumption of structure drift at intermediate support [1]. The authors proposed N-chart to investigate the necessity and effective elevation of intermediate support by using the parameter N. The flexibility of steel structure on the bottom affects the function of intermediate support (e.g. increasing reaction force at intermediate support, effect on bottom skirt calculation); however, the flexibility is not included in the parameter N. In this paper, an additional factor for the flexibility was studied and introduced by structural analysis. A model with flexibility of structure supporting the bottom skirt was used for the analysis. The variable flexibility of steel structure was applied to the bottom of the model to study the impact of bottom structure flexibility on the pressure vessel design. The analysis result was compared with the bottom fixed model without structure flexibility to study an additional factor. Finally, appropriate design approach for tall pressure vessels with intermediate supports was proposed.