Thin-walled tank

From ASCEND

This tutorial is intended to act as a introductory tutorial to ASCEND. It is the same example that forms the basis for Chapters 2 to 4 of the ASCEND Manual (1 MB .pdf).

There are two interactive interfaces available for running ASCEND (see TckTk Screenshots here and see PyGTK screenshots here). A tendency we have noted is that a new user of ASCEND will try one interface and never get around to trying the other. However, we strongly advise that you learn to use both. Each has advantages. In that spirit, we will provide links into the TclTk Quick Guide and the PyGTK Quick Guide to provide the reader with "How To" guidance to accomplish some of the steps when running these two ASCEND interfaces. Try each when advised to do so. At this time the TclTk interface has more tools and a built-in scripting capability to aid debugging very difficult models. The PyGTK interface lends itself to loading and solving a model with minimum effort. In addition, it has a DAE/ODE solving capability tied to it that is not available through the TclTk interface.

Preliminaries

You have ASCEND installed and thus have access to both interfaces to ASCEND.

The Problem

You would like to compute the weight of a thin-walled cylindrical tank made of mild steel as shown in Fig. 1. The diameter of the tank is 20 cm, the height 50 cm, the wall thickness 0.15 cm, and the density of mild steel 7.85 g/cc.

Start the tutorial now by moving on to the introduction.