Starting from 2007 Edition, ASME Section VIII division 2 has been completely revised, taking into account also the progress made by the new European (EN) standards. Enclosed is a graph showing, for the particular case of a torispherical head, the advantage in thicknesses (and consequently in weights and costs) given by the application of this new Edition in respect of many other internationally known Pressure Vessel standards.

 

Sant’Ambrogio will soon release the latest version of our ASME VIII div.2 software in accordance with Edition 2010 of the norm. Programs for calculation of heat exchanger tubesheets will be added to the existing pressure vessel part. ASME VIII div. 1 NextGen version will shortly be added to Div.2. As usual, users of the present version of the ASME VIII div.1 software will receive the NextGen version within the scope of their current support, maintencance & update service. NextGen versions provide the advanced graphical interface, which in the near future will become our common interface for all the other code calculation packages (including EN 13445, VSR and AD 2000).

 

The advantage of this innovative tool is not only its capability of building a 3-D drawing of the vessel (which gives the possibility to check at a glance possible interferences among its different components and to evaluate visually their physical dimensions): in fact it allows the contemporary recalculation of all the vessel each time that a new component has been added, or an existing component has been modified. Note that this is exactly what is required by the modern standards, such as ASME and EN 13445, where some essential calculation parameters (for example the hydrostatic test pressure) can only be determined considering all the pressure components together at the same time.

 

All these new features are leaving unchanged the traditional characteristic of our software, particularly appreciated by the Pressure Vessel Manufacturers, that is its capability to help the designer to take in a few moments the right decisions in order to minimize the thicknesses and the costs, which of course also means a substantial reduction of the engineering cost.