Ratcheting analysis of joined conical cylindrical shells

Abstract

The ratcheting and strain cyclic behaviour of joined conical-cylindrical shells under uniaxial strain controlled, uniaxial and multiaxial stress controlled cyclic loading are investigated in the paper. The elasto-plastic deformation of the structure is simulated using Chaboche non-linear kinematic hardening model in finite element package ANSYS 13.0. The stress-strain response near the joint of conical and cylindrical shell portions is discussed in detail. The effects of strain amplitude, mean stress, stress amplitude and temperature on ratcheting are investigated. Under strain symmetric cycling, the stress amplitude increases with the increase in imposed strain amplitude. Under imposed uniaxial/multiaxial stress cycling, ratcheting strain increases with the increasing mean/amplitude values of stress and temperature. The abrupt change in geometry at the joint results in local plastic deformation inducing large strain variations in the vicinity of the joint. The forcing frequency corresponding to peak axial ratcheting strain amplitude is significantly smaller than the frequency of first linear elastic axial vibration mode. The strains predicted from quasi static analysis are significantly smaller as compared to the peak strains from dynamic analysis.