Nonlinear viscoelastic behavior of shells of revolution under arbitrary loading

The requirement of some structural components such as propulsion systems and gas turbines to operate at high temperatures and pressures make the accurate evaluation of the creep phenomenon exigent (in fast breeder reactor for example). For the expected increases in operating temperatures and pressures, it becomes necessary to perform a thorough analysis of integral structural components of nuclear power plants throughout their life span. Since a large class of structures operating at elevated temperatures are composed of rotationally symmetric shells, a solution technique can be developed which involves the numerical integration of the governing shell equations. This method has been successfully applied to the static and dynamic analysis of thin elastic shells of revolution and for some cases of inelastic material behavior. It has been shown to render solutions efficiently and accurately, usually with only a fraction of computer time and storage requirements and data manipulation that is required for other numerical schemes such as the finite element method. Furthermore, the numerical integration method allows more flexibility for varying the integration step lengths than does the finite difference method and can provide uniform accuracy throughout the analysis. For nonlinear viscoelastic behavior the numerical integration technique is expected to provide similar efficiency to that obtained for the elastic problems. The computer program developed can accept time variation of material properties. Since a single form for the material constitutive law cannot encompass all materials, provisions are made so that the analysis of a very large class of material behavior can be accomplished