Seismic performance of industrial pressure vessels: Parametric investigations of simplified modeling approaches for vulnerability assessment

Abstract

The present paper presents the up-to-date results of an on-going research effort aiming to develop novel, efficient and reliable computational (analytical) methods for assessing the vulnerability of pressure vessel structures as well as at advancing their performance-based seismic design framework. More specifically, various potential simplifications of a refined model of a pressure vessel in order to develop a surrogate one are investigated in detail and the derived results and conclusions lead to the proposal of guidelines for the development of surrogate, cost-effective yet reliable, models for pressure vessels.