The new 2007 Edition of 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.

 

The new ASME2 module, which already includes the 2010 Edition, has just been released together with the brand new Sant’Ambrogio next generation graphical interface, called Sant'Ambrogio NextGen, that will become in the near future the common interface for all our calculation packages (ASME VIII division 1, EN 13445, VSR, 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.

 

Other major enhancements concern the material data base, which has been completely re-designed and now contains all ASME materials, and the calculation report creation: the user can produce either a detailed calculation report with all formulas or a simplified abridged report; furthermore it is now possible to print a calculation report also in cases where the provisions of the code aren't met (in this case the values which exceed the limits set by the code are clearly highlighted in the printout).