Date of Award
Fall 2007
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Mechanical Engineering
First Advisor
Widera, G. E. O.
Second Advisor
Kim, Kyuil
Third Advisor
Fournelle, Raymond A.
Abstract
Cylinders and cylinder-cylinder intersections are basic common structural components that are used in many industries such as pipeline transportation, aerospace, petrochemical, nuclear and power engineering, and construction. Unexpected bursting of cylinders or cylinder-cylinder intersections is dangerous and can cause much damage even loss of life. Therefore, it is necessary and important to know the burst pressure of both cylinders and cylinder-cylinder intersections before using these components in different design applications. Cylinders and cylinder-cylinder intersections can fail under either static or dynamic loading conditions. The object of this study is to find the short-term burst pressure of metal cylinder and cylinder-cylinder intersections under dynamic loading conditions as well as the long-term hydrostatic strength and lifetime of high density polyethylene (HDPE) pipes under static loading conditions. The finite element method is used to perform this study. Some existing experimental data as well as a simplified theoretical analysis were used to verify the present results. The influence of geometric parameters for a cylinder such as diameter to wall thickness ratio and for a cylinder-cylinder intersection such as diameter ratio, thickness ratio, diameter to thickness ratio as well as loading parameters such as dynamic pressure vs. time function were examined. Based on the agreement between theoretical, finite element analysis results, and some experiment results, it can be concluded that properly modeled FEA analyses can be employed with sufficient accuracy to study both the dynamic burst pressures of metal cylinders and cylinder-cylinder intersections subjected to short term dynamic loading as well as the long-term hydrostatic strength of HDPE pipes.