Numerical Simulation and Experimental Study of Strength of Rectangular Steam-heated Sterilizer

Vacuum steam-heated sterilizers are one of the widely used medical instruments due to their high performances in sterilization.Due to its special structure,design of strengthening rectangular sterilizer with circular corner cannot use the stress formula given in the standard GB 150—1998.So it is essential to determine its strength by numerical simulation.The paper proposes a finite element model for predicting the stress distribution based on experiments.Comparisons show that the numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental data.The maximum stress occurs at the discontinuous regions of the strengthening rib.The model can be used to predict the stress distributions of the sterilizer under design pressure,which provide a reference for formulating the correlated criteria of the rectangular sterilizer.