ASME BPVC: A Code That Allows Engineers to Sleep at Night; But For How Long?

By Gaurang Trivedi, TrueCADD

The headline might sound superficial to some, but the ASME BPVC (Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code) is extremely pertinent to design engineers who spend sleepless nights making their boiler and pressure vessel designs safe for operating conditions. Today, no one would really want to repeat industrial disasters like the 1984 Romeoville Refinery blast and Piper Alpha oil rig explosion in 1988. As a matter of fact, similar historical disasters actually provoked four well-known industrialists: Alexander Holley, Henry Worthington, John Sweet and Matthias Forney to forge ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) in 1880, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting technical and engineering standards across the country through voluntary membership and technical publication.

The ASME, as we know today, has grown substantially with a presence in over 150 countries with more than 600 standards currently in print. Surprisingly however, this society is more renowned internationally for its BPVC. Engineers from almost every corner of the world can certainly sleep well at night knowing that pressure vessels built as per the ASME Section VIII will be safe.

The Section VIII of ASME is particularly used by manufacturers across the globe voluntarily, to standardize the design, fabrication, testing, inspection and repair of pressurized vessels and containers. For design engineers and manufacturers, ASME codes continue to play the role of a gateway, allowing only safe pressure vessel designs to take actual physical shape. But, as computational technologies are becoming more robust, reliable and affordable, relying on the codes that were written decades ago seems debatable.

The codes in Division 1 and 2 of Section VIII were developed way back during the Industrial Revolution, way before digital computers were even dreamt of. These codes are obscure, complex and badly written, and have actually a very small space for the application of computational engineering. A much bigger problem, however, is the use of guesswork and empirical experimentation, which was used to develop the codes that kept on multiplying as sections after sections were added; leading to a conservative vessel design. The end result is a pressure vessel that’s heavy and expensive. Advocates of computational technologies are even of the opinion to junk these codes and re-write them completely from scratch, to integrate the use of simulation more tightly and comprehensively. Referring to section, sub-section, page, UG chart and Div. 2 table, etc., etc., is often time consuming and painful

Does this mean that the codes are of no use today? Absolutely not; Section VIII is still considered the standard for safe pressure vessel designs. But there is a need to re-look at these codes again, especially when computational technologies are increasingly becoming reliable and cost-effective. Economical, safe and faster designs are what required in today’s market, and relying on the same old empirical formulations can certainly not solve the purpose. As a high regard the ASME has worldwide, it is a crucial time for the society to implement the changes, as virtual simulation techniques such as FEA (finite element analysis) and CFD (computational fluid dynamics) continue to dominate. Rather than a conservative approach where the end design often turns out to be heavy and expensive, the codes should emphasize on utilizing the robust computational solvers we have today.

Gaurang Trivedi is an engineering consultant at TrueCADD. He has applied his engineering expertise across several highly complex and big scale projects, consequently managing to flawlessly deliver as per the client requirements.