Fatigue analysis - computation of the actual strain range using elastic calculations (factor Ke)

Pressure vessels are not eternal, their life is not endless, but must be long enough for profitable use. Fatigue is the most important damage limiting life time. It is due to variable loading and especially to deformation-controlled loading like thermal dilatation (thermal stress). Hence, it is of prime importance to perform an fatigue analysis in the design phase in order to be sure the pressure vessel life meet requirement of the design specification. It is also useful to perform such an analysis for assessing the remaining life. To compute the fatigue damage, knowledge of the strain range is needed. As calculation taking into account non linear behavior of the material are very expensive and not always reliable, the current practice is using elastic computation. The aim of this paper is to discuss the methods for correcting the elastically calculated strain range and to propose a sound and practical method