A Simplified Fatigue Assessment Method for ASME VIII-2

Abstract

Abstract Fatigue is one of the most common and important failure modes in pressure vessel. ASME VIII-2 provides three screening criterion and three detailed assessment method for fatigue failure. With the decrease of material design factor and the extension of fatigue curve to high cycle, the applicable scope of the three screening criteria become relatively smaller and the economic efficiency is also reduced. Meanwhile, the three fatigue evaluation methods given in ASME VIII-2 Code are all based on detailed numerical calculations (such as finite element analysis (FEA)). Both economic cost and requirements of technical personnel of engineers are higher. In this paper, a simplified fatigue evaluation method is proposed, which gives simple implementation procedures and relatively conservative fatigue evaluation results. Compared with the screening criteria method A, the main advantage is that the scope of its application is wider, that is: (1) the number of significant load cycle can be considered is extended from 1000 to 105; (2) there is no upper limit to the range of pressure fluctuation, which is 20% in method A. Compared with the screening criteria method B, the main advantage is that this method is much simpler and for most materials, design fatigue curves are not required during calculation and evaluation. Compared with the three detailed assessment methods given in ASME VIII-2, this method is very convenient and does not require detailed FEA. The method proposed in this paper can simplify the evaluation process of fatigue analysis in a certain range and provide a more cost-effective engineering assessment method.