Global FRP standard - A comparison between four different design codes for FRP vessels

摘要

The use of FRP and dual laminates has grown a lot for manufacturing vessels and piping during the last years, due to its high corrosion resistance and cost-effectiveness compared with the expensive metallic alloys required for handling highly corrosive fluids. However, the criteria and procedures for designing FRP vessels all around the world are very different, giving birth to very different design codes for every geographical zone. As a result, it is complicated comparing these design codes to choose the one which fits better to our needs. The purpose of this study is comparing four different design codes for FRP vessels (AD-Merkblatt N1 [1], BS 4994:1987 [2], EN 13121 [3] and ASME RTP-1 Ed. 2007 [4]). To do so, five different tanks (two storage tanks, a scrubber and two horizontal pressure vessels) have been designed using all these codes. Next, the equations used for calculating every part of the tanks, and the results obtained have been analyzed and compared, showing the most important strong and weak points of every code, plus their similarities and differences. The full study called "Global FRP standards", has been published by Materials Technology Institute, Inc, (MTI) in 2015.