Plastic Strain Concentration in a Cylindrical Shell Subjected to an Axial or a Radial Temperature Gradient

Abstract

Plastic strain concentration factors for use in elastic fatigue analyses (like K e in ASME Code) are usually overly conservative, but may be unsafe in certain cases. Especially for unnotched structures under thermal loading, many elastic-plastic analyses demonstrated that these plastic strain concentration factors are too restrictive. Thus, the present work derives appropriate factors for the idealized case of a cylindrical shell made of a linear kinematic hardening material and subjected to a radial or an axial temperature gradient. The results obtained are considered to be applicable to many practical problems.