Fatigue crack propagation in thick-walled pressure vessels under hydraulic testing condition

Abstract

Fatigue is one of the failure modes in gun barrel. It is still an important problem to understand crack propagation behavior due to fatigue loading of firing cycles. This paper presents a hydraulic fatigue test method to simulate crack propagation in a tube containing a pre-machined defect on its inner surface. A close inherent relation is found between crack propagating rate and hoop strain on the outside surface of the tube, which provides a feasible approach for investigation of fatigue behavior in gun barrel under actual firing condition.