When dealing with high temperature equipment for low cycle fatigue, it is desired to produce the steady-state condition with computational fluid dynamics (CFD). But in some cases, such as this one herein, the design details are simply too much for the CFD program. In these cases, a highly detailed finite element analysis (FEA) model is necessary, along with suitable internal and external convection coefficients. SMPES, LLC prides itself on spending that extra effort to produce these high quality, highly detailed models. We feel this is necessary to obtain accurate results. The end result is an FEA model that shows realistic limiting components in fatigue and what load or loads is driving this result. A previous model to this one was created for the failure of the same equipment of a sister plant, where the results recreated the precise failure location.
