FEA METHODOLOGY FOR FATIGUE ANALYSIS

 Item Description
 Geometry: Reference to fully dimensioned fabrication drawings.
 Materials: list of material specifications for relevant parts, details of material properties
Used (e.g., Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, density, coefficient of expansion, yield
strength, UTS etc.)
 Loads: details of all loads & failure modes considered & load cases analyzed.
 Acceptance : basis for determining acceptability (e.g. stress limits, Safety factors)
 Model Description
 Geometry : sufficient model details to verify the geometry
 Mesh: details including: number, type & specification of elements, element Properties,
location of areas of interest, mesh gradation & refinement for Areas of anticipated high
stress.
 Boundary Conditions : details of how model is restrained & loaded
 Results
 General: Stresses / displacements at easily verifiable areas remote from Discontinuities
(e.g., shell membrane stresses), plots of overall stress & Deflection plus annotated
extracts from output listing.
 Local: details of locations & source (e.g., nodal / elemental etc) of highest Stresses,
magnitude of highest stresses, stress plots & stress report Extracts for worst case
condition).
 Post-processing: stress linearization & categorization, comparison with acceptance
Criteria.
 Initial analysis run for design pressure / MAWP condition.
 Fatigue screening assessment as per ASME Sec. VIII Div. 2, Part 5 (Section 5.5)
 Fatigue Assessment as per Elastic Stress Analysis and Equivalent Stresses method for
cyclic loading for Differential Pressure conditions (Section 5.5)
 Fatigue life cycle calculations as per Annex 3-F of ASME Sec. VIII Div. 2 Part 5 for cyclic
loading condition.
 Validation
Account for model accuracy by making appropriate reference to element aspect ratio/
warping, error estimation methods, adaptive mesh refinement, mesh convergence,
stress concentrations, singularities and / or comparison with another analytical result.
 Conclusion
Include a comparison of calculated stresses with the acceptance criteria.