Numerical limit load analysis of 3D pressure vessel with volume defect considering creep damage behavior

Abstract

The limit load of 3D 2.25Cr-1Mo steel pressure vessel structures with volume defect at 873 K is numerically investigated in the present paper, and limit load under high temperature is defined as the load-carrying capacity after the structure serviced for a certain time. The Norton creep behavior with Kachanov-Robotnov damage law is implemented in ABAQUS with CREEP subroutine and USDFLD subroutine. Effect of dwell time to the material degradation of 2.25Cr-1Mo steel has been considered in this paper. 190 examples for the different sizes of volume defects of pressure vessels have been calculated. Numerical results showed the feasibility of the present numerical approach. It is found that the failure mode of the pressure vessel depends on the size of the volume defect and the service life of the pressure vessel structure at high temperature depends on the defect ratio seriously.