Erosions and their effect on the fatigue life of thick walled, autofrettaged, pressurized vessels

This paper summarizes the results that have been found in evaluating the effect of erosions on thick walled, autofrettaged, pressurized, cracked vessels. The problem is solved numerically via the FEM method. Autofrettage, based on von Mises yield criterion, is simulated by thermal loading and stress intensity factors (SIF's) are determined by the nodal displacement method. SIF's were evaluated for a variety of relative crack depths a/t and crack ellipticities a/ c emanating from the tip of the erosion of various geometries, namely, (a) semi-circular erosions of small relative depths of the cylinder's wall thickness t; (b) arc erosions for several dimensionless radii of curvature r′/t; and (c) semi-elliptical erosions with ellipticities of d/h. Other parameters evaluated were, in the cases of finite erosions, the semi-erosion length to the semicrack length L_e/c, the erosion angular spacing α, and the autofrettage level. First, we summarize the differences found between a vessel with one erosion and one with multiple erosions. We show that for full cylinder length erosions, the erosions tend to make smaller cracks more dangerous than larger cracks in fully autofrettaged vessels and that as the crack grows the stress intensity factor initially decreases. We then show that as the crack grows further, the effect is to increase the effective stress intensity factor (SIF) but also to practically void the existence of the erosion. We show further that lower levels of autofrettage will lead to higher effective SIF's but that partially eroded cylinders (cylinders where erosions are a fraction of the cylinder length) lead to lower SIF's. Affecting these values in all cases, of course, are the erosion geometry and depth as well as the crack geometry and depth.