Ductile Fracture of Pipes and Cylindrical Containers With a Circumferential Flaw

Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of ductile fracture of a pipe or cylindrical container having a relatively long and deep circumferential part-through crack or a through crack and subjected to a uniform axial membrane load in the crack region. After describing the evolution of the ductile fracture process, first the results of the elasticity solution for the circumferentially cracked cylindrical shell based on the Reissner’s transverse shear theory are presented. The elastic-plastic part-through crack problem is then considered. In the analysis the plastic deformations are approximated by a perfectly plastic layer similar to the conventional Dugdale model. The load carrying capacity of the cylinder is then estimated in various ways by using the crack opening stretch along the leading edge of the crack as the critical load factor.