BS4994

BS4994 design of FRP equipments is different from steel design, due to certain fundamental differences between steel and FRP. Steel is isotropic where as FRP is anisotropic, having different properties in different directions.

The Differences from Design of Steel

A comparison of design procedure is given below.
Object 1 2

(For thermoplastics, a creep based design procedure is adopted. But for TP liners used along with FRP, no design calculation is necessary as it is considered as non-contributing to the mechanical property of the laminate)
ISOTROPIC MATERIAL (LIKE STEEL) FRP

Factor of safety is provided by relevant

specifications.

Detailed procedure exists for factor of safety

calculation based on method of manufacture, long-term behavior, temperature, cyclic loading and post-curing procedure.

Only steel properties considered for design For ductile material: Design Stress = Yield
Stress / Factor of Safety

Resin and each form of glass (chopped

strand mat, woven roving, unidirectional filament winding etc) need be individually compared to find out is it a load limited or strain limited property (strength) that should be considered for design. If it is strain limited, whether it is resin strain limited or reinforcement strain limited? If reinforcement strain limited, CSM or WR or FW?

For brittle materials: Design Stress =

Ultimate Stress / Factor of Safety

Load-limited allowable unit load (ul) is

calculated based on minimum laminate [UTUS] (Table 5 of BS4994-87) and factor of safety [K].

Maximum allowable strain (us) is calculated

which is to be taken as smaller of 10% of allowable strain [ R] of unreinforced resin and 0.2%

Strain limited allowable unit load [us] is

calculated from allowable strain [ ] laminate unit modulus [Xz] and

 If for all layer, us < uL, uz is taken as us of each layer.

Otherwise [if us < uL for some of the layer],

strain of each layer under unit load uL is calculated from Xz

d, design strain is then calculated as

smallest of strain of all layers.

Design Unit Loading uz for each type of layer

is then calculated from
d and

Xz

Suitability of proposed laminate construction

is checked by comparing applied unit load Q and allowable unit loads [ ui mi ni] NOTE 1: The transition from resin-strain limited to reinforcement-strain-limited condition occurs based on safety factor. When safety factor is high, allowable reinforcement strain limit is reduced . K Resin strain below which design is resin-strain limited. 1.79 1.43 1.19 1.02 0.89

8 10 12 14 16

FRP design is done using new load units: unit loads. Know more

UNIT STRENGTH AND MODULUS

It is to avoid the uncertainty associated with specifying the thickness alone, that BS4994 introduced the concept of "unit properties". It is property per unit width, per unit mass of reinforcement. For example, UNIT STRENGTH is defined as strength in Newton per millimeter width for a layer consisting of 1 kg of glass reinforcement per square meter. I.e. the unit is N/mm per Kg/m2 glass . Similar is unit modulus. It is the ratio of Unit Strength to direct strain. UNIT STRENGTH AND UNIT LOAD Unit strength is the strength of a laminate obtained by fracture tests, or from the minimum laminate properties obtained from the design standard (For example, Table 5 of BS4994-87) where as unit load is the force carried by a laminate resulting from pressure or any other applied forces in a laminate.

NOTE: you can convert unit strength to conventional tensile-strength as follows: Suppose you have a laminate of 5 layers of CSM. Calculate its thickness t (from glass content etc). First, calculate Unit Tensile Load of laminate = 200 N/mm per Kg/m2 x Area Density (Kg/m2) x 5 (this is for unit width of the 5 layer laminate). Then, find tensile-strength = load per unit width and unit thickness = Unit Tensile Load / t (N/mm2)

Pressure Vessel Design Case Study

This case study considers the design of a cylindrical storage vessel typical of those used in chemical and process industries to store liquids. Corrosion resistance, strength and ease of fabrication make composite materials particularly attractive for this sort of application. The installed cost of a GRP vessel compares favourably with that of more traditional materials, such as stainless steel and lined carbon steel vessels. The majority of such vessels have diameters in the range 1 to 10 m, with wall thicknesses of between 5 and 50 mm. In many respects, the process of designing a composite vessel is the same as that facing the designer of metal vessels. The design must take into account the design stress resulting from the pressure and size of the vessel in question. However, the composite designer is faced with the additional task of designing the material to be used. In so doing, they will generally take the opportunity to use a variety of differing layers within the laminate construction in order to achieve the most economical and desirable combination of properties. The design methodology used in this case study is that developed in BS4994.This requires that the design process is considered in three stages, assessment of allowable strain, calculation of the applied unit loads and the selection of an appropriate laminate configuration. Case Study Parameters The vessel considered in this case study is a cylindrical vessel, internal diameter 1.75 m with an effective pressure of 2 bar (0.2 MPa). The operating temperature for the vessel is 40C. In service, the vessel contents level will primarily be static, although on occasion, the vessel will be emptied and refilled. The case study will follow the design process, using the BS4994 methodology, to develop a suitable laminate configuration. Allowable Design Strain BS4994 determines an allowable design strain through the use of a number of part factors, which account for the effects of loading, environment and manufacturing conditions on the long-term chemical and mechanical behaviour of the GRP laminates. These part factors are defined as follows: k1 k2 k3 k4 k5 method of manufacture (range 1.6 to 3.0) long term behaviour (range 1.2 to 2.0) temperature (range 1.0 to 1.2) cyclic loading (range 1.1 to 1.4) curing procedure (range 1.1 to 1.5)

The product of these factors, and a further safety factor of 3.0 results in an overall design factor, K, which is used to evaluate the allowable design strain, L. For the case considered here, these part factors are evaluated as follows: For hand lay-up, part factor k1 = 1.6

 For long term behaviour, part factor k2 = 2.0 For temperature, assuming operation at 40C, and use of a resin system with a heat distortion temperature of 80C or higher, part factor k3 = 1.0 For cyclic stressing, assuming occasional filling and emptying, part factor k4 = 1.1 For curing procedure, assuming post cure at elevated temperature, part factor k5 = 1.1 Therefore, as

The "load limited" allowable limit loading uL is given by

where u is the ultimate tensile unit strength (UTUS is in N/mm per kg/m2 ) of the material, and K is the design factor calculated above. chopped strand mat (CSM) the UTuS is 200 N/mm/(kg/m2), thus uL = 17.2 N/mm/(kg/m2) woven rovings (WR) the UTuS is 300 N/mm/(kg/m2), thus uL = 25.8 N/mm/(kg/m2) The load limited allowable strain is given by

where u and K are as previously defined and X is the laminate extensibility. For CSM, the extensibility is 12 700 N/mm/(kg/m2), giving For WR, the extensibility is 16 200 N/mm/(kg/m2), giving
L L

= 0.14%

= 0.16%
r

There is a further overriding upper limit to the design strain of the lesser of 0.2% or 0.1 x
r

(where

is the fracture strain of unreinforced resin in a simple tensile test.

Assuming a resin strain to failure of 3%, then, in this case, the design remains load limited and the design unit loading ux = uL, i.e. 17.2 N/mm/(kg/m2) and 25.8 N/mm/(kg/m2) for CSM and WR respectively. Applied Loads The applied loading on the vessel is then calculated using conventional analysis techniques. In this

case, assuming no significant axial loading, the vessel wall circumferential unit stress is given by:

where P is the pressure, D is the vessel diameter and t is the vessel wall thickness.

Laminate Construction At this point, it is possible to design the laminate construction. The total quantity of reinforcement, in this first case for a vessel constructed simply from multiple CSM layers, is simply determined by:

where wx is the weight of a single layer and nx is the number of layers.

Therefore a total weight of 10.2 kg m-2 of reinforcement is required. The distribution of this would be selected according to manufacturers' individual preferences, but one suitable configuration would be: 2 layers 300 g m-2 (one at each surface) = 0.6 kg m-2 16 layers 600 g m-2 = 9.6 kg m-2 Total = 10.2 kg m-2 Assuming a glass content of 30% for CSM, the wall thickness would be 2.2 mm per kg/m2 of glass, giving a total wall thickness of 22.4 mm. A more efficient structure is obtained using a combination of CSM with WR, in which case the laminate construction is determined as follows: The design unit loading in the WR must be reduced such that the strain does not exceed the design limit for CSM, hence

per kg/m2 of glass The design of the laminate can then be determined from

Therefore a suitable design would be as follows: Detail Reinforced gel coat 1500 g/m2 CSM 800 g/m2 WR x5 450 g/m2 CSM 800 g/m2 WR 300 g/m2 CSM Resin rich layer with binding tissue 17.2 x 0.45 Calculation 17.2 x 1.5 Total 25.80

22.6 x 0.8 x5 129.10

22.6 x 0.8

18.08

17.2 x 0.30

5.16

TOTAL

178.14

In this case, assuming a glass content of 30% for CSM with 2.2 mm per kg/m2 of glass, and a glass content of 55% for CSM with 0.95 mm per kg/m2 of glass, the vessel wall thickness would be 13.5 mm. Dished End Design If a torispherical end is desired for such a vessel, a typical geometry would be hi /Di = 0.25 and ri /Di = 0.15 (Note that this is slightly deeper than would be used for a typical metallic construction). At these values, the shape factor Ks is approximately equal to 1.78. The membrane unit load for a domed end subject to pressure is given by

For the current case, that is

Assuming a construction of CSM mat and woven rovings, similar to that for the vessel shell, gives a required weight of reinforcement is given by

Therefore a suitable design would be as follows: Detail Reinforced gel coat 1200 g/m2 CSM 800 g/m2 WR x12 450 g/m2 CSM 800 g/m2 WR 300 g/m2 CSM Resin rich layer with binding tissue 17.2 x 0.45 Calculation 17.2 x 1.2 Total 20.64

22.6 x 0.8 x12 309.84

22.6 x 0.8

18.08

17.2 x 0.30

5.16

TOTAL

353.72

This gives an actual laminate thickness of 25.06, assuming a glass content of 30% for CSM with 2.2 mm per kg/m2 of glass, and a glass content of 55% for CSM with 0.95 mm per kg/m2 of glass, as previously. For a laminate of this thickness,

and the assumed value of Ks = 1.78 is reasonable. If it had been found that the value of Ks was not acceptable, then the calculation would need to be repeated with a better estimate for the value of Ks until convergence was achieved.

Reference: BS4994 - Specification for Vessels and Tanks in Reinforced Plastics, BSI 1973. Keywords: BS4994, Design, Design strain, Part factors, Laminate, Code