Conjugated Heat Transfer in Skirt Hot Box in Pressure Vessels

Pressure vessels are common equipment in oil, gas and petrochemical industries. In a hot containing fluid vessel, excessive temperature gradient at junction of skirt to head (weld line), can cause unpredicted high thermal stresses; Thereby fracture of the vessel may occur as a result of cyclic operation. Providing a hot box (air pocket) in crotch space is a economical, applicable and easy mounted method in order to reduce the intensity of thermal stresses. Natural convection due to temperature difference between the wall of pocket, will absorb heat near the hot wall (head of the vessel) and release that near the cold wall (skirt of the vessel), then the skirt wall conducts heat to the earth as a fin. This conjugated heat transfer removes the temperature gradient boundary at welded junction. This phenomena will lead the temperature gradient on the weld line from a sudden to smooth behavior, thereby the skirt-head junction, that is a critical region, could be protected from excessive thermal stresses. In this paper the profit of hot box and conjugated heat transfer in cavity has been demonstrated experimentally. As a result it is shown that the conductive heat transfer through the skirt (which acts as a fin) ensures the continuation of natural convection in the box. Also the governing equations has been solved numerically and compared with experimental results.