Effect of Cone Design on the Structural Integrity Assessment of an Oil and Gas Conical Perforated Strainer Using CFD-Coupled Finite Element Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29017/scog.v49i3.2130Keywords:
conical strainer, finite element analysis, CFD- FEA coupling, fluid structure interaction, pressure induced failure, structural integrityAbstract
Cone strainers play an important role in oil and gas process piping systems and are often subjected to high-pressure fluid flow. The early failure of a cone strainer in a Low Temperature Separation Unit (LTSU) during prolonged service motivated a detailed structural integrity investigation. A combined Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) method was used to assess the structural behaviour of a conical perforated strainer under actual operating conditions (30.51 bar (a), 94.3 °C) and contingency conditions (36.61 bar (a), 113.16 °C), the latter representing the pressure and temperature excursions encountered intermittently during normal service. Pressure, temperature and wall shear stress obtained from steady-state CFD were applied to the structural model through one-way fluid–structure interaction, and structural adequacy was expressed as a Unity Check (UC), the ratio of the peak von Mises stress to an allowable stress of 336 MPa. The baseline 2 mm punching plate (Geometry A) was adequate under actual conditions (UC = 0.87) but failed under contingency conditions, reaching 371.8 MPa and UC = 1.11, as a result of flow-induced bending across the large, low-stiffness perforated cone surface. Thickening the punching plate to 4 mm (Geometry B) reduced the contingency peak stress by 13.4% to 322.0 MPa and the UC to 0.96, but transferred load into the ring plate, whose UC rose from 0.95 to 0.99 and which thereby became the new critical component. Repositioning the ring plate (Geometry C) reduced the punching plate UC to 0.91 and the ring plate UC to 0.30, at the cost of a 19.7% increase in pressure drop, from 7273 Pa to 10894 Pa. Geometry C is therefore proposed as the optimal configuration, and the CFD-informed FEA workflow provides a reliable framework for integrity evaluation and design optimisation of conical strainers used in the oil and gas industry.
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