MEC 4862 - Fatigue and Fracture Mechanics

Mini-Project
Due on Monday May 14, 2014

Organize yourselves in groups of three people. Each group should work independently on
solving the following problems.

Problem 1. (LO2)

The following information on two steels and two aluminiums has been obtained:

Material
Y

(MPa)
K
Ic

(MPam)
Fabricated cost
($/kg)
Steel A 1240 132 0.95
Steel B 830 176 0.70
Aluminium C 415 55 2.15
Aluminium D 207 88 1.10

You are responsible for the analysis of a 3-m-long section of a pressure vessel (neglect any end
effectsconsider only the 3-m-long section) with the following general conditions:

GENERAL CONDITIONS
(a) Internally pressurized vessel (3-m-long). Cost given is fabricated (cost/kg). Neglect any
other costs of fabrication.
(b) Vessel diameter = 1020 mm (O.D)
(c) Internal pressure, p = 13.8 MPa
(d) Yielding occur when the hoop stress exceeds
Y
.

TWO SPECIFIC CONDITIONS
(I) Flaw-free vesselperfect fabricationfactor of safety of 2 against yielding
(II) Flawed vessel with poor quality control12.7-mm-deep longitudinal crack (a/2c =
0.25)factor of safety of 2 against fracture and yielding

REQUIRED SOLUTION
1. Determine the design stress levels, wall thickness, weight and cost of 3-m section for each
specific condition (I and II) and material (i.e., Steel A, Steel B, Aluminium C and Aluminium
D)
2. Give comments on your answers in (1)

NOTE:
You may use MS Excel spreadsheet, MATLAB, programming in any code or any
Mathematical software to help in your iterative procedure. Sample of calculations,
spreadsheet printout or print of the detailed programming code should be submitted.
DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Problem 2. (LO3)

The structural problem to be solved is described in Fig. 1. Use finite element software ANSYS to
find the stress intensity factor.
Run it for different crack length cases and compare your solution with the table provided in the
ASTM standard.

Hints/Assumption:
- Take advantage of symmetry and simplify the geometry a little bit.
- To prevent rigid body translation, fix the x-displacement of the point of application of the load P.
- To facilitate the creation of the focused mesh at the crack tip, place the origin of the axis system at the
crack tip.
- Choose the material properties as those of PMMA (E = 4000 N/mm
2
and = 0.3), although, for this
problem, the material properties do not enter the expression of the stress intensity factor.
- Choose the load P as unity.
- Perform the analysis in plane strain.

Fig. 1

Problem 3. (LO 4)



Use ANSYS to perform the two types of fatigue analysis:
- Strain life
- Stress life