Rectangular Pressure Steam Sterilizer Design Methods And Structural Optimization

The rectangular pressure-steam sterilizer is widely applied in medical fields due to its excellent performances such as sterilization function, small occupation space, high special surface area and high heat transfer efficiency. However, on account of its complicated structures, the engineering design method has not been completely formed until now. Also, there are no corresponding criteria followed to design the rectangular pressure-steam sterilizer. Therefore, the researches on structure optimization and design method about the rectangular pressure-steam sterilizer are significant for the product security and costs reduction.In this paper, the theoretical, numerical and experimental methods are commonly adopted to study the rectangular pressure-steam sterilizer. The primary research work and conclusions are outlined bellow:(1) Study of engineering design method. Based on the theory of the plates and shells, a design method of the rectangular pressure-steam sterilizer is established, which is well applied to design two structures of the rectangular pressure-steam sterilizer in terms of the 1.2 m~3 volume.(2) Experiment investigation, the experiment course for the rectangular pressure-steam sterilizer is setup and carried out on a 1.2 m~3 mono-layered rectangular pressure-steam sterilizer. The stress and strain data are measured and the stress distributions are obtained.(3) Numerical simulation research. A finite element models and solution algorithm of the rectangular pressure-steam sterilizer are proposed. The stress analysis is conducted to obtain the stress distributions under internal pressure and the thermal-structure coupling fields respectively. Results show that the numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental results and the temperature loads can release the stress concentrations though the effects are comparatively small related to internal pressure, and it's safe to neglect the temperature influence on the structure design.(4) Parametric structure optimization. Using the APDL parametric design program language, the parametric optimization model and optimization method are established to conduct the multi-objective optimization of two sterilizers. Results show that good performance can be obtained by applying this structure optimization method.