IJIRST –International Journal for Innovative Research in Science & Technology| Volume 1 | Issue 12 | May 2015

ISSN (online): 2349-6010

Design and Testing of Drop Off Plate for Low

Pressure Safety Devices
Prakash V. Ghelani Prof. M. I. Vyas
PG Student (Cryogenics Engineering) Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering
L.D. College of Engineering L.D. College of Engineering

Abstract
Safety valve in an industry often acts as the primary device to prevent catastrophic failure under pressure conditions. When
cryogenic storage is considered, the safety valves used are of first concern as the storage is carried out at very low pressure and
high mass flow rate. The commercially available safety valves for outer vacuum jacket cryogenic storage vessel are not
compatible with lower pressure range of 1.2 bar. The low pressure safety valves are needed for such low pressure applications.
The design of drop off device for low pressure applications has been considered in this project. Modelling and analysis of the
design is done and further the creation of a working model of the same followed by testing of the model. Testing of conventional
drop off device is also done to ensure the performance of the model created.
Keywords: Low Pressure, Cryogenic Storage Vessel, Drop plate, Bursting Disk, CFD
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

I. INTRODUCTION
The primary function of a safety valve is to protect property and life. Because a safety valve is often the primary device to
prevent catastrophic failure under pressure conditions, it is important that the valve works at all times i.e. it must be 100%
reliable. Safety valves should be installed wherever the maximum allowable working pressure of a system or pressure containing
vessel is likely to be exceeded, in particular under fault conditions due to the failure of another piece of equipment in the system.
Pressure excess can be generated in a number of different ways including: Failure of a cooling system allowing vapor or fluid to
expand Compressed air or electrical power failure to control instrumentation Plant fires during the start-up conditions of a plant
unexpected chemical reactions in chemical plants.
Cryogenic liquid containers, also referred to as liquid cylinders, are double-walled, vacuum vessels with multilayer insulation
in the annular space. They are designed for the reliable and economic transportation and storage of liquefied gases at cryogenic
temperatures, typically colder than –130°F (–90°C). There are two primary advantages of a liquid container. The first is that it
contains a large volume of gas at a relatively low pressure compared to a compressed gas cylinder. The second is that it provides
a source of cryogenic liquids which can be easily handled. Cryogenic liquid containers are often incorrectly referred to as
Dewars. Dewars are open, non-pressurized vessels for holding cryogenic liquids.
All cryogenic liquids produce large volumes of gas when they vaporize. The expansion ratio is the amount of gas generated
from a given amount of liquid. If a sufficient amount of liquid is vaporized within a closed container, it will produce enormous
pressures that could rupture the vessel. For this reason, cryogenic liquid containers are protected with multiple pressure relief
devices. Similarly, any system for the storage and delivery of cryogenic liquids should be carefully designed to avoid trapping
cryogenic liquid at any point in the system by installing a relief device.

II. DESIGN METHODOLOGY

A. Design of Shell:
For designing of shell the following assumptions are made for safe design.
1) Shell length is 1500 mm which is predetermined by design limitation.
2) Shell internal design pressure is 3 bar and outside design pressure 1 bar.
3) Shell outside diameter is taken 457 mm required to calculate inside diameter and shell thickness.
By above assumptions and following section VIII division 1 of American Society of Mechanical Engineering (A.S.M.E.)
following results are obtained.
Table – 1:
Shell calculation result
Symbol Description Unit Value
Pi Internal pressure of vacuum jacket Bar 3
Po Outside pressure vacuum jacket Bar 1.01325
Do Outside diameter of the shell mm 457

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 Design and Testing of Drop Off Plate for Low Pressure Safety Devices
(IJIRST/ Volume 1 / Issue 12 / 023)

t Shell wall thickness Mm 4.19

e Head thickness Mm 10.05398248
T Design temperature °C 27
P Design maximum/minimum allowable working pressure Bar 4.55
S Maximum allowable stress in tension Mpa 16700
Do/t Ratio Unit less 109.0692124
L/Do Ratio Unit less 3.282275711
A Factor derived from chart Unit less 0.00038
B Factor derived from chart unit less 5400

B. Design of Drop Plate:

This device is design according to standard EN 13458.
Following is the design procedure of drop plate in that we take bore diameter as per standard NB 2 inch for flange design and
SCH 10 is required for Pipe size

Fig. 1: drop plate with flange

For SCH 10, we obtained following dimension of the flange of 2 inch bore pipe and flange standard flange dimention150
Table – 2:
Dimension of 2” pipe standard flange
Sr. No Dimensions Unit Size
1 Size NB mm 50.8
2 Outer diameter mm 60.3
3 Thickness mm 2.77
4 ɸ ‘A’ mm 54.76
5 ɸ ‘E’ mm 66.35
6 ɸ ‘C’ mm 90
7 ɸ ‘D’ mm 110
8 D mm 9
9 P mm 5.03
11 Threading M8
As we know that we have design internal pressure 1.2 bar and external pressure is 1 bar so, according to that pressure our drop
of plate should lift in case of internal pressure rise. So force balance between internal and external pressure condition is carried
out as following:
1) Force Balance:

Fig. 2: drop plate design

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 Design and Testing of Drop Off Plate for Low Pressure Safety Devices
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2) Volume of Drop Plate:

3) Mass of Plate:

The value of a and c is decided in such a way that the mass of the drop plate would be minimum.
The results below are obtained by above mentioned procedure.
Table – 3:
drop plate calculation result
sr.no Parameter Unit Size
1 SIZE NB Inch 2”
2 D1 Mm 71.38
3 D2 Mm 77.92
4 a Mm 5.5
5 C Mm 7
6 A1 mm2 4002.2
7 A2 mm2 4769.18
8 Volume up mm3 42718.631
9 Mass Kg 0.33748
10 Pi Mpa 0.12
11 Po Mpa 0.1
12 F1 N 480.265
13 F2 N 480.229
14 F1-F2 N 0.03549
15 D Mm 74.14

III. CFD ANALYSIS

ANSYS Fluent is very renowned software for caring out CFD analysis. So, all simulations and analysis in this paper are also
performed by this software package. Same as most other CFD tools ANSYS Fluent also is also divided in three main parts. Pre
Processor, Solver and Post processor.

A. Pre Processor:
In the starting, it is necessary to define geometry and topology of working fluid and surrounding solid parts. For that 3D model is
generated in ANSYS Design Model.

Fig. 3, 4: Front View and Orthographic View of drop off device assembly

As shown in figures a 3D model is generated using ANSYS design model tool. The main parts of the assembly are drop plate,
flange, cover plate, end plate etc.
After generating the 3D model next step is to define the geometry. So the surface from which the fluid will enter into the
geometry is defined as ‘inlet’ and the surface opposite to the ‘inlet’ surface or from which the fluid will come out is defined as
‘outlet’ by same manner.
Next step is to generate the mesh. It can be done by clicking on the tab named as ‘generate mesh’. While generating mesh
different mesh controlling parameters can be inserted to generate mesh to match with desired criteria. For this analysis 10 Node
Quadratic Tetrahedron type of mesh is used.

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 Design and Testing of Drop Off Plate for Low Pressure Safety Devices
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Fig. 5: meshing on Drop off plate device

Now, next step is to set boundary conditions and values of other flow parameters. Conditions are assigned for this case are as
shown in table- 4.
Table – 4:
Conditions assigned for the case
Model Viscous-Turbulent
Fluid Nitrogen
Solid Material Stainless Steel 304
Inlet boundary condition 2 bar
Outlet boundary condition 1 bar
Flowrate of fluid 0.1kg/sec
Density of fluid 1.138kg/m3
Viscosity of fluid 1.663e-05 kg/m sec

Fig. 6: Applying gravity force to drop off device

Fig. 7: Boundary conditions and fluid inlet flow conditions

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 Design and Testing of Drop Off Plate for Low Pressure Safety Devices
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B. Solver:
After assigning all the required data, solving process starts. First solution is initialized for calculating the initial data. Number of
iterations to be solved are allocated and setup is started. ANSYS shows the graph of residuals vs. iterations while solving the
process. When values of residuals declines from assigned criteria, solution gets converged.

C. Post Processing:
It is used for the analysis and visualization of the resulting solution. Graphs, contours, streamlines etc. can be generated and
plotted in this module. Results of current case can be are shown in the following figures.

Fig. 8: Pressure Profile Fig. 9: Velocity profile

Fig. 10: Velocity Profile with Turbulence Flow Fig. 11: Turbulence profile with values of Energy

IV. CONCLUSION
The overpressure is under limit as per the set pressure of drop off device. It doesn’t increase suddenly. So no over pressure
occurs. Only turbulence occurs at the outlet of drop off device in small area.

REFERENCES
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41, issue1-2, July-august 2010.
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of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, June 2014.
[3] Backpressure in a high-lift compensated pressure relief valve subject to single phase compressible flow J. Francis, P.L. Betts Journal of Loss Prevention in
the Process Industries 11 (1998) 55–66.
[4] Development of a variable quench pressure relief valve for superconducting magnet system. Kimura a, H. Ohhata, T. Okamura, Y. Makida, H.
Yoshida,Cryogenics 51 (2011) 465–469.
[5] Study on effect of liquid level on the heat leak into vertical cryogenic vessels, Yang Li, Rongshun Wang, and Caili Wang, Cryogenics 50 (2010) 367–372.
[6] Temilade Ladokun, Farhad Nabhaniand Sara Zarei, Accidents in Pressure Vessels: Hazard Awareness, London, U.K., Proceedings of the World Congress
on Engineering 2010 Vol II WCE 2010, June 30 - July 2, 2010.
[7] Kaganer MG, Thermal insulation in low temperature techniques, Moscow: mashinostroenie, Russia 1996.
[8] Relief valve, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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 Design and Testing of Drop Off Plate for Low Pressure Safety Devices
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[9] Product brochure of Breetec International N.V. Steenweg 210b-3665 As

[10] Pressure Relief Valve Selection And Sizing (Engineering Design Guidelines), KLMT, technology Group,3-12 Block Aronia, Jalan Sri Perkasa 2,Taman
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[11] Randall f Barron, cryogenic system, Oxford Press, London, 1987.
[12] G.G. Haselden, Cryogenic fundamentals, academic press, London and New York.
[13] Design and safety data book, Air liquid specialty America LLC.
[14] Reference guide for O-Ring materials, MRS.
[15] ASME sectionVIII-Division-1, standard for cryogenic storage vessel safety equipment, 2013.
[16] BS EN 13648-1 Cryogenic vessels. Safety devices for protection against excessive pressure. Safety valves for cryogenic service, 2008.

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