Stress intensity factor solution for crotch-corner cracks of tee-intersections of cylindrical shells

✍ Scribed by M. A. Mohamed; J. Schroeder

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1978
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 875 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1573-2673
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00115999

✦ Synopsis

A B S T R A C T Crotch corner zones are of considerable concern in investigating the margin of safety against brittle fracture for tee intersections of nozzles with vessels and branch pipes with run pipes. This requires an estimate of stress intensity factor, i.e. K-factor for either postulated or detected cracks in this region. The high computational costs involved in using three dimensional finite elements suggests the development of a simple and accurate method to calculate K-factors for such cracks. In this paper, existing solutions for corner cracks at the intersections of nozzles with plates or vessels are reviewed and an empirical relationship is developed for K-factors of such cracks.

In addition, a general method is proposed to predict K-factors of corner cracks using stress concentration. This method gives results, which are in good agreement with existing data for nozzle comer cracks and is used to predict K-factor for tee-intersections of pipes. The loading considered was internal pressure only.