Pressure Vessel Design Tools

Use these design tools to size, choose materials and determine vessel properties such as weight and volume. Useful for creating preliminary designs that meet the general rules and guidelines of ASME VIII Division 1. These can only be used for interior pressure calculations. For simplicity, not all aspects of the VIII-1 code are included – see the notes on each sheet to determine the limitations.

Material Strength

Lookup the design strengths of commonly used ASME material for use with the other design tools on this page.

Pipe Shell Design Tool

Calculate the required wall thickness or the maximum allowed working pressure of an ASME VIII-1 pipe or straight rolled shell. Also calculates the volume and weight. Internal Pressure Only!

pipe calculator

Pipe Chart

Click on any size in this useful pipe chart to get dimensions in imperial and metric, before and after undertolerance.

Elliptical Head Design Tool

Calculate the required wall thickness or the maximum allowed working pressure of an ASME VIII-1 2:1 ratio elliptical head. Also calculated the volume and weight. Internal pressure only!

F&D Head Design Tool

Calculate the required wall thickness or the maximum allowed working pressure of an ASME VIII-1 Flanged and Dished Head. Suggested dimensions are provided to calculate a standard ratio head. Also calculates the volume and weight. Internal pressure only!

Hemispherical Head Design Tool

Calculate the required wall thickness or the maximum allowed working pressure of an ASME VIII-1 hemispherical head. Also calculates the volume and weight. Internal pressure only!

Nozzle Design Tool

Run area replacement calculations on ASME VIII-1 nozzles WITHOUT repads. Internal pressure only!

Nozzle with Repad Design Tool

Run area replacement calculations on ASME VIII-1 nozzles WITH repads. Internal pressure only!

Cone Design Tool

Calculate the required wall thickness or the maximum allowed working pressure of an ASME VIII-1 conical section. Also calculates the volume and weight. Internal pressure only!

Cone Layout Tool

Develop a fully thickness corrected flat layout of a conical transition the meets corner to corner at the welds.

Design and Registration Services at PVEng

ASME Code Design – We work to many ASME standards to design and validate pressure vessels, boiler, fittings and piping systems.

  • Compress, PV Elite, DesignCalcs and our own in-house software
  • ASME VIII-1, VIII-2, I, IV, B31.1, B31.3, B31.5

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) – We use FEA to design and validate fittings and vessels that cannot be designed by rule-based codes like VIII-1 or B31.3.

  • Pressure, thermal, wind and seismic load analysis
  • Permissible service life (fatigue life)

Pipe Stress Analysis – Pipe stress analysis is mandatory for British Columbia registration and it is recommended practice for many other systems.

  • Caesar II pipe stress analysis
  • Analysis to many piping codes including B31.1 and B31.5

Canadian Registration Number (CRN) – We are Canada’s largest independent registrar of fittings, vessels and piping under the CRN program registering for more than a thousand customers.

  • Design, review and registration with P.E. / P. Eng. stamping for all provinces
  • Specific knowledge of what needs registration and what is exempt by province

About Us

Pressure Vessel Engineering has over twenty years of successful experience in the pressure vessel field working for thousands of customers.

  • Twelve Professional Engineers on staff licensed to stamp and sign off on designs for use in all Canadian jurisdictions.
  • Fast and professional assistance from our team.
  • Serving industries such as water filtration, oil & gas, pharmaceutical, biogas, food & beverage and more!

Need help? Our contact information is to the right.