Stress and deformation of re-usable intermediate bulk containers

Abstract

Current understanding, in order to test the strength and reliability of an Intermediate Bulk Container is by building a real size container and test its physical condition by utilizing compression test system, random vibration test system and rotational edge drop test system. By using the commercial finite element software, ANSYS, the testing could be simplified, as instead of building a true scale structure which requires money and time, a model can be simulated and tested in the software. In this report, the author modeled the re-usable intermediate bulk container and simulated different situations in the ANSYS software. The basic structure of a re-usable intermediate bulk container was designed and subjected to gravitational field to eliminate any possible errors and warnings. Next, a complete static analysis of where stress and deformation in the container was performed under different variables such as water level, plate thickness and stiffener dimensions. The static analysis would then provide a suggested optimum model. After static analysis, the random vibration PSD analysis was carried out on a single container, while in the last phase; the analysis was done on stacked intermediate bulk containers of up to four. The position of failure, deformation and stress distribution of the structure is analyzed and studied to gain a better understanding of the software. From this project, the author has concluded that the commercial software ANSYS is reliable to a large extend and is economically viable.