Shakedown Limit Load Determination for a Kinematically Hardening 90-Degree Pipe Bend Subjected to Constant Internal Pressure and Cyclic Bending

Abstract

A simplified technique for determining the shakedown limit load of a structure employing an elastic-perfectly-plastic material behavior was previously developed and successfully applied to a long radius 90-degree pipe bend. The pipe bend is subjected to constant internal pressure and cyclic bending. The cyclic bending includes three different loading patterns namely; in-plane closing, in-plane opening, and out-of-plane bending moment loadings. The simplified technique utilizes the finite element method and employs small displacement formulation to determine the shakedown limit load without performing lengthy time consuming full cyclic loading finite element simulations or conventional iterative elastic techniques. In the present paper, the simplified technique is further modified to handle structures employing elastic-plastic material behavior following the kinematic hardening rule. The shakedown limit load is determined through the calculation of residual stresses developed within the pipe bend structure accounting for the back stresses, determined from the kinematic hardening shift tensor, responsible for the translation of the yield surface. The outcomes of the simplified technique showed very good correlation with the results of full elastic-plastic cyclic loading finite element simulations. The shakedown limit moments output by the simplified technique are used to generate shakedown diagrams of the pipe bend for a spectrum of constant internal pressure magnitudes. The generated shakedown diagrams are compared with the ones previously generated employing an elastic-perfectly-plastic material behavior. These indicated conservative shakedown limit moments compared to the ones employing the kinematic hardening rule.