Burst Pressure Simulation for Pressure Equipment: Simulating Safety Early

Do you sometimes feel under pressure? Or is it just your components?

In the development of pressure equipment, pumps, and valves, burst pressure plays a central role. Whether a component can safely withstand the required internal pressure determines certification, market launch, and ultimately operational safety. A component that appears structurally sound may still fail in a burst pressure test: often due to localized stress concentrations that only become visible under pressure.

Burst pressure simulation makes it possible to identify such weaknesses early. However, this requires simulation to be practical and usable in everyday engineering workflows.

Burst Pressure Tests as a Mandatory Requirement for Pressure Equipment

Burst pressure tests are not an optional quality assurance tool. For many components, they are required under the EU Pressure Equipment Directive (PED) and must be performed and documented regularly!

However, physical burst pressure tests are demanding:

• Prototypes are destroyed
• Development times increase
• Iterations are expensive

Early numerical simulation of burst pressure can help validate critical design decisions before prototypes are built, thereby reducing the need for physical testing.

Why Burst Pressure Simulation Is Challenging for Pressure Equipment

The physical principles behind burst pressure simulation are well understood. The real challenge lies in the geometry of modern pressure equipment.

Components with complex internal geometries are particularly difficult to simulate:

• Branched internal flow channels
• Varying wall thicknesses
• Organic transitions and fillets
• Internal cavities

For accurate simulation, all pressure-loaded internal surfaces must be reliably identified. In traditional FEA workflows, this is a manual and error-prone step. Model preparation can take more time than the actual computation.

Especially for cast parts or complex CAD assemblies, simulation is often applied late in the process or outsourced.

Bringing Simulation into the Design Process

At Dr.Q, our goal is to establish simulation as an integral part of mechanical development: not as a downstream specialist process.

A key advantage is that we develop the entire simulation workflow ourselves. This allows us to implement features specifically tailored to the requirements of pressure equipment, pumps, and valves.

A central example is the automated detection of all wetted surfaces for burst pressure simulation.

Automated Wetted Surface Detection for Burst Pressure Simulation

For realistic burst pressure simulation, all internal surfaces in contact with the medium must be correctly subjected to internal pressure. For complex pressure equipment, this is difficult to achieve manually.

With direct access to the code, Dr.Q can:

• Analyze connected internal volumes
• Automatically identify pressure-carrying regions
• Derive all relevant wetted surfaces

Without manual surface selection.

For users, this means:

• Reduced effort in model preparation
• Reproducible burst pressure simulations
• Increased reliability for complex geometries

This makes FEA simulation practical even for pressure equipment with demanding internal structures.

Technical Exchange with WILO SE

During the development of the burst pressure feature, we received expert support from WILO SE. This collaboration helped us better understand typical requirements from real-world pump and pressure equipment development.

The open dialogue and regional proximity were particularly valuable, enabling direct and constructive exchange. We are very grateful for this support.

From CAD Geometry to Reliable Burst Pressure Assessment

The simulation workflow is intentionally kept lean:

1. Upload the CAD model of a pressure device
2. Define the analysis goal (burst pressure simulation)
3. Select material
4. Specify test pressure

Geometry preparation, wetted surface detection, meshing, and computation are performed automatically. Within a short time, reliable insights are generated on:

• Stress distributions
• Potential failure locations
• Structural safety margins

Simulation thus becomes an early decision-making tool in the development of pressure equipment: before physical burst pressure tests are carried out.

Burst Pressure Simulation in Valve World

The underlying technical article on burst pressure simulation was published in the December issue of Valve World and places the topic in the context of pump and valve development.

You can access it for free here: https://valve-world.net/subscriptions/