Fitness-For-Service (FFS) assessment of pressure equipment in petroleum and petrochemical plant can be used to demonstrate the structural integrity of pressure equipment that may contain a flaw or damage. If the equipment includes a damaged component with a compressive stress field under applied design loads, assessment for protection against collapse from buckling is needed. There has been, however, little study on buckling assessment for general tower with metal loss subjected to seismic loadings in petroleum and petrochemical plant.
In this study, relationship between metal loss shape and buckling moment was investigated for general tower in the plant using finite element analysis (FEA) . In addition, the results of FFS assessment using API 579-1⁄ASME FFS-1 (API⁄ASME FFS) were validated by FEA. The results of validation indicated that API⁄ASME FFS assessment provides conservative results in the case of localized metal loss. Finally, a more accurate assessment procedure for localized metal loss was proposed.
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