Case Study: FMC Technologies achieves ASME BPVC VIII Division 3–compliant cumulative damage visualization with ANSYS

FMC Technologies - Customer Case Study

FMC Technologies, a global leader in subsea systems, faced the challenge of qualifying high-pressure, high-temperature subsea equipment (pressures >15,000 psi, temperatures >350°F) to ASME BPVC VIII, Division 3, which requires cumulative damage to be below 1. Because ANSYS Structural did not natively plot ASME cumulative damage, FMC needed a customized visualization and evaluation method; they worked with ANSYS tools including ANSYS Mechanical, ANSYS Workbench and ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL).

ANSYS implemented an FEA-based workflow using ANSYS Mechanical/Workbench, developed APDL macros to compute cumulative damage per ASME KD 232.1, and wrote additional .RST files containing nodal elemental damage values for post-processing. ANSYS’ scripting and post-processing enabled visualization of damage, extraction of principal stresses to evaluate limiting tri-axial strain, storage of derived results, and identification of regions that did not satisfy ASME Sec. VIII D3—allowing FMC to target design changes and qualify subsea components against the standard.

FMC Technologies

Abhineet Gupta

Engineer