DESIGN OF JOINTS AND SUPPORT

Support

There are three types of support which are saddle, skirt and bracket support. All these
three supports are commonly used to support either horizontal or vertical vessel. For our reactor
which is in vertical position, we used bracket support as it is commonly used to support
vertical vessels. For the designs of the bracket, there are two types of design and we chose
double gusset plate as shown in the figure 2 below.

Figure 1: Example of Bracket Support

For Pressure Vessel
 Figure 2: Double Gusset Plate Bracket Design

Where,

Lc = the characteristic dimension of bracket (depth), mm

tc = thickness of plate, mm

The chosen of this bracket support is based on our reactor design and our condition. Skirt
support is more preferable if the bending moment is likely to be significant. However, there
are no significant of the bending moment and thus, we chose the bracket support for our reactor.
 Joints

Joints are used to connect pipes and instruments to vessel. The common joints that are
being used are flanged and screwed joint. While screwed joints are commonly used for small-
diameter pipe connections (below 40mm), the flanged joints are more needed for connecting
the pipes. Flanged joints can also be used on the vessel body. For various of application, every
industries are using about five types of flange such as below:

1) Welding-neck flanges
2) Slip-on flanges, hub and plate types
3) Lap-joint flanges
4) Screwed flanges
5) Blank, or blind, flanges

We chose the welding-neck flanges as our reactor joints due to it abilities to be used
under extreme service condition such as at high temperature, shear and vibration loads. The
other characteristic for this flange is it has a long tapered hub between the flange ring and the
welded joint. This characteristic will reduce the discontinuity stresses between the flanges and
branch beside increases the strength of the flange assembly.

Figure 3: Welding-neck Flanges

 Besides choosing the type of the flanged joint used for this vessel, we must also choose
the type of the flange faces in order to suit into the process equipment. There are two basic
types of flange faces which are full-faced flanges and narrow-faced flanges. We chose gasket
within bolt circle which is a narrow-faced flanges type.

Figure 4: Gasket within Bolt Circle

This type of flange face is the most preferable type of flange to be used for process
equipment. It has a plain face and the gasket is held in place by friction between the gasket and
flange surface.