文档介绍：Reading Material 16
Pressure Vessel Codes
①History of Pressure Vessel Codes in the United States Through the late 1800s and early 1900s, explosions in boilers and pressure vessels were frequent. A firetube boiler explosion on the Mississippi River steamboat Sultana on April 27, 1865, resulted in the boat's sinking within 20 minuted and the death of 1500 soldiers going home after the Civil War. This type of catastrophe continued unabated into the early 1900s. In 1905, a destructive explosion of a firetube boiler in a shoe factory in Brockton, Massachusetts, killed 58 people, injured 117 others, and did $400000 in property damage. In 1906, another explosion in a shoe factory in Lynn, Massachusetts, resulted in death, injury, and extensive property damage. After this accident, the Massachusetts governor directed the formation of a Board of Boiler Rules. The first set of rules for the design and construction of boilers was approved in Massachusetts on August 30, 1907. This code was three pages long.
②In 1911, Colonel E. D. Meier, the president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, established mittee to write a set of rules for the design and construction of boilers and pressure vessels. On February 13, 1915, the first ASMEBoiler Code was issued. It was entitled "Boiler Construction Code, 1914 Edition". This was the beginning of the various sections of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, which ultimately became Section 1, Power Boilers.
③The first ASME Code for pressure vessels was issued as "Rules for the Construction of Unfired Pressure Vessels", Section Ⅷ, 1925 edition. The rules applied to vessels over 6 in. in diameter, volume over , and pressure over 30 psi. In December 1931, a Joint API-mittee was formed to develop an unfired pressure vessel code for the petroleum industry. The first edition was issued in 1934. For the nest 17 years, two separated unfired pressure vessel codes existed. In 1951, the last API-ASME Code was issued as a sep