Research and Development
Our r&d activities are focused on structural design of equipment, design check calculations as well as estimation of equipment lifetime and development of new design solutions.
Design and verification of equipment
Aside from functionality, there are also other important equipment design requirements such as cost-effective manufacture and operation, as well as safety requirements. Currently, we are mainly focused on these areas:
- damage of tube bundles caused by flow induced vibration
- optimisation of cylindrical shells stiffening (according to EN 13445 or EN 1993–1–6)
- software for pressure vessel design verification according to EN 13445
Remaining lifetime estimation
During design phase, it is virtually impossible to precisely estimate remaining lifetime of the equipment, because design calculations consider only representative values of material characteristics, geometry parameters and operation conditions. Design calculations usually use many conservative simplifications. Therefore, it is usually necessary to conduct inspections and estimations of remaining lifetime of the equipment or its components in the course of its life for the safety to be ensured. Knowledge of current remaining lifetime is paramount in deciding about repairs and replacements of components as well as in planning further inspections. Ideally, operator is rewarded by safe and cost-effective operation of the equipment that may be prolonged compared to design life.
Remaining lifetime is affected by various degradation mechanisms. Currently, we are developing software that predicts damage caused by fatigue and creep as well as formation of and damage of or caused by oxide scales.
Softwares that we use
Software plays crucial role in our research. Finite element simulation software is essential:
For the purpose of automatising calculations, data visualisations and in-house software development, we use Python programming language and its libraries::
