Analysis and design of vertical vessel foundation

Abstract

Vertical vessels are massive structures used in oil industries which store oil and different fluids. Due to the massiveness of the structure and pedestal considerations, an octagonal foundation is designed in place of a simple rectangular footing. The design includes analyzing of loads from superstructure, design of base plate and foundation bolt, design of pedestal and footing. The design of pile is not considered in the present study. The main objective of the study is to evaluate the manual method of design procedure. The same footing is modeled in different commercial finite element software. Performance of the designed foundation as obtained from the finite element analysis is then compared with that obtained from manual calculations. Maximum moment obtained from the software for the given support forces are found to be higher than those calculated manually according to Process Industry Practices guideline. Therefore, the design process outlined in PIP underestimates the bending moment demand as per the present study. However the present study is based on one typical case study. There is a provision for repeating this study taking into consideration a large number of foundations with varying parameters to arrive at a more comprehensive conclusion.