Elasto-plastic stresses in thick walled cylinders

In the optimal design of a modern gun barrel, there are two main objectives to be achieved: increasing its strength-weight ratio and extending its fatigue life. This can be carried out by generating a residual stress field in the barrel wall, a process known as autofrettage. It is often necessary to machine the autofrettaged cylinder to its final configuration, an operation that will remove some of the desired residual stresses. In order to achieve a residual stress distribution which is as close as possible to the practical one, the following assumptions have been made in the present research on barrel analysis: A von Mises yield criterion, isotropic strain hardening in the plastic region in conjunction with the Prandtl-Reuss theory, pressure release taking into consideration the Bauschinger effect and plane stress conditions. The stresses are calculated incrementally by using the finite difference method, whereby the cylinder wall is divided into N-rings at a distance Δr apart. Machining is simulated by removing rings from both sides of the cylindrical surfaces bringing the cylinder to its final shape. After a theoretical development of the procedure and writing a suitable computer program, calculations were performed and a good correlation with the experimental results was found. The numerical results were also compared with other analytical and experimental solutions and a very good correlation in shape and magnitude has been obtained.