Mechanical properties of thin walled tubes

Thin walled tubes are used in many applications such as clad tubes for nuclear reactor fuel. Circumferential mechanical properties and burst strength are important characteristics of such tubes. These properties can be evaluated using burst test and ring tension test. This paper describes and compares both the types of tests carried out on thin walled zirconium alloy tubes. Ring tension test is an effective way of obtaining tensile flow properties of thin walled tubes in a simpler way. When the failures of tubes are controlled by plastic instability, the flow properties obtained from ring test can be used to estimate burst pressure and circumferential ductility expected from the larger sized burst tests. (author)