Let me start by saying I'm in a time crunch to leave the office today. I can clean this up a bit tomorrow, but I am hoping I could get some feedback overnight.

Here I have a shell model for a 1/4 of a section of a cylindrical pressure vessel. It has a flat distributor plate with a design differential pressure of 40 psi. (Tank is 60" OD. The plate has 4 stiffeners)

I need to make sure the stress in shell is not pushed too high due to the presence of the plate.

I know I have a discontinuity at the plate to shell junction, but I still need to convince myself that the stress is not too high.

I have plotted the stress along the edge circled in red above. (To give you an idea of the scale, the stiffener is 6" tall.) '0' is the plate-to-shell junction.

I am utterly confused on how to interpret this data. I know you cannot interpret the design for me, but I am hoping I can get some help on how I can interpret it.

I will post more details tomorrow if need but I hope this is enough for some help overnight.

Thank you,

Phil