FEA-Based Failure Analysis of a UHP Chamber for

Simulation of Deep Sea Conditions

Yiping Wu, Yun Shen, Chenyun Zhang, Gang Wu, Xun Liu, Yong Guo, Haocai Huang*
Ocean College, Zhejiang University
Zhoushan, 316021, China
*Corresponding author: hchuang @zju.edu.cn

Abstract—As high hydrostatic pressure is the main feature

of deep-sea environment, pressure test is an important part in the
development of deep-sea instruments and equipment. An ultra-
high pressure (UHP) chamber with several interface ports is
designed and manufactured for pressure test. In this paper, the
finite element analysis (FEA) is applied to the failure analysis of
the chamber, including the elastoplastic analysis and the local
overstrain failure assessment. The analysis results show that the
design meets the requirements.
Keywords—pressure vessel; finite element analysis; ultra-high
pressure; elastoplastic analysis; local overstrain failure assessment
II. OVERVIEW OF THE 200MPA PRESSURE CHAMBER
The maximum working pressure of the UHP deep-sea
simulation test equipment is 200MPa, the design pressure is
220MPa, the working temperature is 1~40 ºC, the design
temperature is 50 ºC. The net size of the inner chamber is 300
mm×1000 mm. Design life is 20 years and design number of
cycles is 3000 times. The main technical parameters and design
parameters of the chamber are shown in Table I.
TABLE I. MAIN TECHNICAL INDEXES AND DESIGN PARAMETERS

I. INTRODUCTION The effective geometry of

Working Design
the pressure chamber
The average depth of the oceans is close to 4,000m and the pressure pressure
Inner Outer Length
/MPa /MPa
maximum depth is 11,034m in the Mariana Trench in western diam. /mm diam. /mm /mm
North Pacific [1]. And the pressure, as is known, will increase 300 570 1000 0-200 220
by 1MPa for each additional 100 meters in depth. To explore the Working Testing Working
deep sea, the underwater equipment working in deep sea must temp. / ºC temp. / ºC medium Material a
undergo strict pressure tests before putting into use. For the 1-40
Normal
Freshwater 36CrNi3MoV
difficulty of performing in-situ tests, it is important to establish temperature
a.
Material of the chamber and the sealing covers
a deep-sea high-pressure environment simulation test device in
the laboratory. The chamber consisting of a cylinder and two sealing covers
is installed horizontally and is supported by two brackets. The
A pressure chamber is a container with pressure differential
cylinder is made of a single seamless cylinder, mirror symmetry
between inside and outside [2]. High pressure is developed to
at both ends. Left sealing cover is drilled with one 1-1/8 "-12
simulate the high pressure of the deep sea. Generally, the
UNF exhaust port, two 1-1/8" -12 UNF high pressure oil inlet
pressure which is higher than 10MPa is called high-pressure, and
and one 7/16 "-20 UNFLED light port; and the other sealing
the pressure which is higher than 100MPa is called ultra-high
cover is drilled with one 5/8 "-18UNF camera plug port, one 1-
pressure (UHP). A UHP chamber (200MPa) with inner diameter
1/4" -12UNF core interface, one 1-1/8 "-12UNF external
of 300mm and inner length of 1000mm is developed for the
interface. The overall design scheme is shown in Fig.2. Between
destructive tests of some full ocean depth devices and in this
the cylinder and the covers, 12-tooth trapezoidal thread
paper, a series of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of the pressure
engagement and double O-ring are utilized to guarantee the
chamber are performed to prevent various possible failures and
sealing performance.
to ensure safe operation.

Fig.1 Schematic diagram of the ultra-high-pressure deep-sea simulator

system


Fig.2 Chamber and bracket diagram

978-1-5386-4814-8/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

III. FINITE ELEMENT PERFORMANCE ANALYSES B. Elastic-Plastic stress analysis
GB/T34019-2017 "Ultra-high Pressure Vessels" [3] Ansys workbench 15.0 finite element analysis software is
provides several failure criteria such as plastic collapse used to perform elastoplastic analysis on this chamber
analysis criterion, local over-strain analysis criterion, according to the following steps shown in Fig. 5.
ratchet analysis criterion, fatigue analysis criterion, and
brittle fracture analysis criterion. This design scheme selects
two failure criteria: plastic collapse analysis criterion and
local over-strain analysis criterion according to the structural
characteristics of the equipment and the operating conditions.
The Ansys workbench 15.0 is used for the safety check of the
UHP chamber.
A. Modeling
Due to the different numbers and positions of the openings
in the sealing plug, either side of the chamber is subjected to a
1/8 model respectively. The left and right chamber 1/8 models
and the divided finite element grids are shown in Fig. 3,4
respectively.

Fig.5 Failure assessment procedure for plastic collapse

1) True stress-strain curve

The true stress-strain curve of 36CrNi3MoV material
according to appendix E of [3] is shown in Fig. 6.

Fig.3 The left chamber 1/8 model and grid partition renderings

Fig.6 The real stress-strain curve of 36CrNi3MoV material

2) Determination of load conditions

According to the provisions of section 4.3.5 of [3], the
plastic collapse failure assessment method can be used to
assess the failure condition of the design condition and
pressure test condition. The load combination is shown in
Table II.

TABLE II. LOAD COMBINATION OF PLASTIC COLLAPSE FAILURE ASSESSMENT

Conditions Load combination Load / MPa

Design
2.0 (P + Ps +M) 440
condition
Pressure test
Fig.4 The right chamber 1/8 model and grid partition renderings 1.5[Rp0.2/Rtp0.2 (P + Ps + M)] 330
condition
Since the elastic model and stress-strain curve of the
material under the design condition and pressure test condition
are the same, and the load of the design condition covers the
one of the pressure test condition, the elastoplastic analysis
method is used for the plastic collapse failure assessment only
under the design condition.
3) Elastoplastic numerical calculation
The real stress-strain curve is added to the material
properties, and the pressure load is applied. The large
geometric deformation is taken into consideration [4-5]. For
numerical solution, the calculated chamber displacement
convergence solution and the equivalent stress (Von Mises
stress) solution of the left and right chamber parts are shown
in Fig. 7, 8 respectively.
Fig. 7-a Displacement contour of the left chamber
Fig.7-b Von Mises stress contour of the left chamber
Fig. 8-a Displacement contour of the right chamber
Fig.8-b Von Mises stress contour of the right chamber
The numerical calculation converges throughout the
loading process, indicating that the plastic collapse failure
assessment passed.
C. Local over-strain failure assessment
Section 6.3 of [3] uses elastoplastic analysis method for
the assessment of local over-strain failure. Using the finite
element analysis software ANSYS-workbench 15.0 to perform
elastoplastic analysis on this equipment according to the steps
shown in Fig. 9.
Fig. 9 Local excessive deformation failure assessment procedure
1) Determination of load conditions
According to the provisions of section 4.3.5 of [3], the
plastic failure assessment method can be used to assess the
failure of the design conditions. The load combination is shown
in Table III.
TABLE III. LOAD COMBINATION OF LOCAL OVERSTRAIN FAILURE
ASSESSMENT
Conditions Load combination Load / MPa
Design
1.42(P + Ps+ M) 312.4
conditions
 2) Elastoplastic numerical calculation
The calculation results of 312.4 MPa (0.71 times of the
entire loading duration) extracted by the elastoplastic
analysis time-series solution in the plastic collapse failure
assessment are used as the assessment criteria for local over-
strain failure elastoplastic analysis. The equivalent plastic
strain of the left and right chamber parts at 312.4MPa are
shown in Fig. 10, 11 respectively.
IV. CONCLUSION
Fig.10 The equivalent plastic strain of the left chamber
Fig.11 The equivalent plastic strain of the tight chamber
3) Determination of the strain limit
The triaxial strain limit of any part of the container is [6]:
ߪଵ ൅ ߪଶ ൅ ߪଷ ͳ
ɂ୐ ൌ ͲǤ͸ ή ‡š’ቈെʹǤʹͺ ቆ െ ቇ቉ (1)
͵ߪ௘௤ ͵ strength evaluation of Al-carbon fiber/epoxy composite cylindrical
Where, ɐୣ୯ is the equivalent stress and is calculated
according to formula (2) [6].
ͳ ͳ
ߪ௘௤ ൌ ሾሺߪଵ െ ߪଶ ሻଶ ൅ ሺߪଶ െ ߪଷ ሻଶ ൅ ሺߪଷ െ ߪଵ ሻଶ ሿʹ (2)
ξʹ
4) Qualification judgment
If the equivalent plastic strain ɂ௣௘௣ at any part of the
chamber satisfies ɂ௣௘௣ ൑ ɂ୐ , the assessment passes.
Since ANSYS Workbench cannot perform post-processing
of complex functions (such as exponential functions) on the
result, the settlement result file is imported into Ansys-apdl, and
the array is calculated using a programming command to obtain
the value of A corresponding to each node. The results are all
less than 0, which means the assessment are passed.
FEA based failure analysis of the 200MPa pressure
chamber are carried out by ANSYS software. The finite
element analysis results verifies the correctness of the
theoretical design calculation and helps the designer to gain
detailed conditions of the chamber under ultra-high pressure.
The results of the elastoplastic analysis and the local
overstrain failure assessment prove that the design of the
chamber is able to meet the requirements of the strength
standard.
A series of hydraulic pressure tests will be performed to
verify its reliability in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Shanghai Boiler Works
CO., LTD. in China for providing drawing sheets and design
parameters. The valuable technical support from the staff
throughout the project is also appreciated.
REFERENCES
[1] Lynne D.Talley, George L.Pickapd, William J.Emery and James H.Swift,
“Descriptive Physical Oceanography:An Introduction”, 6th ed., Elsevier,
2011.
[2] Tamboli K. “Fatigue Analysis of Pressure Vessel by FEA Techniques”.
International Journal of Engineering Trends & Technology, 2014, 13(1).
[3] GB/T34019-2017 "Ultra-high Pressure Vessels", Chinese National
Standard.
[4] Liu, P. F., et al. "Failure analysis of natural gas buried X65 steel pipeline
under deflection load using finite element method." Materials & Design
31.3, 2010, pp. 1384-1391.
[5] Zheng, J. Y., and P. F. Liu. "Elasto-plastic stress analysis and burst
laminates." Computational Materials Science 42.3,2008, pp.453-461.
[6] Moss, Dennis R. Pressure Vessel Design Manual (Third Edition). 2004.