Analysis of autofrettaged metal tubes

Thick-walled cylinders are widely used as compressor cylinders, pump cylinders, high pressure tubing, process reactors and vessels, nuclear reactors, isostatic vessels and gun barrels. In practice, cylinders are generally subjected to sudden and frequently drastic pressure fluctuations, such as the pressure generated in a gun barrel upon the firing of the weapon, pressure reversals in pump cylinders or in process reactors employing high-pressure piping, necessitating enhanced strength of such cylinders. A process for enhancing the strength of thick-walled cylinders has been in service, and is referred to as 'autofrettage'. It extends the service life of the cylinder. The autofrettage is achieved by increasing elastic strength of a cylinder with various methods such as hydraulic pressurization, mechanical swaging, or by utilizing the pressure of a powder gas. This research work deals with the hydraulic and mechanical autofrettage of metal tubes with the objective to attain enhanced strength. Five metal tubes are taken randomly for analysis purpose. The experimental data for five metal tubes is obtained to analyze the behavior of different parameters used during, before, and after autofrettage process. For this research, two-stage autofrettage is taken into consideration. The modeling of the metal tube is carried out in WildFire-ProEngineering, and for analysis purpose, finite element software ANSYS7 and COSMOS are used. The graphical analysis of swage autofrettage is carried out using MATLAB7. The results are validated using available experimental and numerical data. (author)