Determination of Expanding Pressure of Hydraulically Expanded Tube-to-Tubesheet Joint

Abstract

It is very important to determine the expansion pressure or residual contact pressure of tube-to-tubesheet joint. The expansion pressure and the residual contact pressure are affected by the geometry, material mechanical properties of the tube and tubesheet. In the basic theory of calculating the residual contact pressure of tube-to-tubesheet joints, the elastic-perfectly material is assumed. Because of the strain-hardening of the materials, linear strain-hardening or power strain-hardening were adopted in some analyzing models of the hydraulically expanded tube-to-tubesheet joint. In this paper, a general strain-hardening material model is adopted and an analytical model is proposed and validated by finite element analysis results. The elastic-perfectly model, linear strain-hardening model or power strain-hardening can be the special case of the present model.