Global and Local Stress Analysis of Coke Drum by New Temperature-dependent Elastoplastic Constitutive Material Model

Coke drums are major petroleum refinery and oil sands upgrading facilities associated with the processing of oil sands bitumen. The service lives of current coke drums are limited and frequent repairing is required due to severe cyclic thermal-mechanical load experienced. The objective of this project is to find root causes causing the damage/failure through more accurate global and local elastoplastic analyses on the coke drums by using new developed material constitutive model. Based on deeper understanding of the damage mechanism, potential improvements on the design, fabrication, operation and maintenance of coke drums will be proposed. The industrial partner of this project is a major user of the coke drums. Application of the proposed improvement measures will results in extending service lives of their existing equipment and in future building more robust coke drums.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Zihui Xia

Student:

Yejian Jiang

Partner:

Suncor Energy Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Oil and gas

University:

University of Alberta