A Study on Hydraulic Autofrettage of Thick-Walled Cylinders Incorporating Bauschinger Effect

Abstract

Pressure vessels which are subjected to cyclic external or internal high pressure are used in many fields of industry and need to be sure of reliability and safety. To ensure of reliability and safety, thick-walled cylinder, such as a cannon or nuclear reactor, is autofrettaged to induce advantageous residual stresses. The compressive residual stress which was introduced by autofrettage process acts to offset the tensile residual stress induced by internal pressure. It increases operating pressure and restrains crack initiation and crack propagation. As the autofrettage level increases, the magnitude of compressive residual stress at the bore also increases. However, the Bauschinger effect reduces the compressive residual stresses with prior tensile plastic strain, and decreases the beneficial autofrettage effect. There are some differences between theoretical solution considering elastic-perfectly material behavior and real autofrettage process results. The purpose of the present paper is to predict the accurate residual stress of SNCM 8 high strength steel using the Kendall model which was adopted by ASME Code. The tensile and uniaxial Bauschinger effect tests of SNCM 8 were performed to evaluate Bauschinger effect factor(BEF), thereafter this constant was used in calculating the residual stress. The residual stress distribution which is considering the Bauschinger effect was profiled using Kendall model, and the results were compared with the analytical and Finite Element analysis. The results were found that residual stress incorporating the Bauschinger effect at bore was smaller than ideal calculation. These results should be considered in designing pressure vessels.