Burst pressures of thin-walled cylinders constructed of steel exhibiting a yield plateau

Abstract

The burst pressures of large diameter-to-thickness ratio thin-walled cylinders constructed of steel exhibiting a yield plateau were evaluated experimentally, by finite element analyses (FEA), and by existing predictive equations. The good agreement between the predicted and experimentally measured burst pressures of three thin-walled tanks with a large diameter-to-thickness ratio of 342, demonstrates that the proposed FEA model and failure criterion can evaluate the burst pressure of a thin-walled cylinder accurately. In contrast, a conventional elastic-strain hardening plasticity material model may overestimate the burst pressure of a cylinder. The results indicate that a nonlinear stabilization technique in ANSYS is a useful way to overcome the convergence difficulty caused by material softening when the FEA model includes the steel yield plateau. Comparisons of existing predictive models and experimental values reveal that most of the equations have a prediction deviation less than 10%, and that the Faupel equation can predict the burst pressure of a thin cylinder with high diameter-to-thickness ratio, with high precision.