Over the past 30 years, more than 7000 layered vessels using at-ribbon-wound cylindrical shells have been manufactured in the People's Republic of China. Theoretical as well as experimental investigations show that there are distinct economical and engineering advantages when using such vessels. The vessel provides the industry with a competitive design suitable for use in the oil refining, chemical and petrochemical fields. The present state of art in strength, design method and some related areas of development of such vessels are described.

A flat steel ribbon wound pressure vessel was adopted by ASME Code Case 2229 on 16 August 1996. By considering the additional strength caused by friction between ribbon layers, the authors deduced equations for prediction of longitudinal and hoop bursting pressure of such vessels. The calculation results from the equations, which are easy to calculate and convenient to apply in the engineering, are in excellent agreement with experimental results. It is the theoretical base for equal strength design in axial and circumferential direction. In addition, the criterion of failure form of such a vessel is also given.

ASME Code Case 2229 provides minimum requirements for designing and constructing flat ribbon wound layered pressure vessel. The authorhas worked in this field for more than 10 years and describes the design philosophy of the fiat ribbon wound layered pressure vessel through four parts: strength calculation, fatigue strength, engineering design, and nozzle reinforcements. A new joint construction between ribbon wound shell and hemispherical head thinner than shell and comments on the Code Case are also given.

It has been observed that the degree of contact between layers and the reside stresses caased by pre-tension winding of ribbons does not influence bursting pressure of flat steel ribbon-wound pressure vessels. This suggests the idea that the desirzble design criteria for vessels of this type should beaed on bursting failure made. Le. wall thickness, should be determined by bursting pressure which it strongly influneces by friction between layers and laminar effects, It is shown that the probabiliry of bursting failure of vessel for which the bursting pressure is not Iess than 2.5 dedgm pressure, is less than 10-10. An example demonstrates that a design procedure basent on this information not only has significant economic advantages, but also can indi. care bursting probability.

Flat steel ribbon wound pressure vessels have been adopted by the ASME boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Section Ⅷ, Division J and Divesion 2. An excellent safety and scrive record has been built up in the past 34 years. Based on the interfacial friction model proposed by Zheng [1], a more accurate method for predicting the stresses in a flat steel ribbon wound ressure vessel is offered in this paper, taking account of the axial displacement, the change in the helical winding angle, the interfacial friction between ribbon layers and the effect of lamination. Comparison between experimental results of five test vessels with and inside diameter varying from 350 to 1000mm, four different helical winding angles (18, 24, 27 and 30°), two width-thickness rations of the ribbon (20 and 22.86) and rosults of oalculation using the stress formulae available demonstrates that the method in this paper is more accurate and that interfacial friction gives a marked strengthening contribution to the axial strength of the vessel.