Failure Mechanisms

Failure Mechanisms and Design

Design Implications of Fast Fracture

· Pressure vessels represent a class of thin- walled containers for which the process of fast fracture represents a major problem.

· The diagram represents a cylindrical pressure vessel with an internal pressure, p, and a wall of thickness, t, containing a crack of length 2a or a surface crack of length, a. The cylinders radius
r >> t.
· For this configuration the hoop stress, σ_t , is related to the pressure by: σ_t = (pr/t).

From: Ashby and Jones, "Engineering Materials I," Pergamon (1986)