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Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 3401–3408 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings

ICMPC-2019

Analysis of Steady State Creep Behaviour in Spherical Vessels

Made of Composite Material
Sukhjinder Singh Sandhua, Tejeet Singhb and V.K. Guptac
a
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, S.B.S.S.T.C., Ferozepur, 152004, INDIA
b
Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, S.B.S.S.T.C., Ferozepur, 152004, INDIA
c
Professor, Mechanical Engineering, UCoE, Punjabi University, Patiala, 147002, INDIA

Abstract

This study deals with estimation of steady state creep stresses and strain rates in composite spherical vessels subjected to internal
and external pressures. The creep behaviour of the material was described by threshold stress based creep law used for composite
materials. The well established von-Mises yield criterion has been also used in this analysis. The effect of reinforcement size and
reinforcement volume content on the stresses and creep rates in the spherical vessels was studied. The creep stresses in the
spherical pressure vessels do not have significant variation except of effective stress. On the other hand, the tangential, radial as
well as effective strain rates in the spherical vessel reduced to significant extent by using lesser diameter particles and increasing
the quantity of silicon carbide particles.
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the 9th International Conference of Materials Processing and Characterization, ICMPC-2019

Keywords: Sphere, Creep, Composite, Internal pressure and External pressure.Introduction

1. Introduction
The spherical vessels made up of monolithic materials may fail when exposed to extreme environmental
conditions of high temperature and pressures. Therefore, over the last few decades, the composite materials and
ceramics have been emerged as the materials of choice for designers for various applications such as components of
automobile, sports, aerospace etc. Use of composites can reduce the weight of components as compared to use of
monolithic materials (Kaw, 2006). In past few years, the study of creep in composite spherical vessels has attracted
the interest of many designers. Many researchers have obtained the stresses in FGM sphere and found that it could
be reduced by changing the properties of material along radius.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: 33sukhjinder@gmail.com

2214-7853© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the 9th International Conference of Materials Processing and Characterization, ICMPC-2019
3402 Sukhjinder Singh Sandhu et al./ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 3401–3408

(Nieh, 1984; Roy and Tsai, 1988; and Salzar et al. 1996). Johnson and Khan (1963) presented a theoretical
analysis of the distributions of stress and strain in metallic spherical vessels exposed to internal and external
pressures at high temperatures. They estimated the generalized creep and elastic strains in the presence of pressure
and thermal gradient. Sim (1973) analyzed the creep behaviour of thick-walled spheres subjected to internal pressure
and a negative thermal gradient. The study indicated that at steady state, the displacement rate in radial direction is
proportional to the creep rate for stress and temperature. Hulsurkar (1978) has used Seth’s transition theory in a
composite spherical vessel subjected to internal pressure and obtained the creep stresses. It is revealed that in special
cases, the results obtained from the study matches with those estimated by usual creep theory. Miller (1995)
presented mathematical solution to obtain elastic as well as creep stresses and displacements in a thick spherical
shell subjected to both internal and external pressures. Nayebi and Abdi (2002) analyzed plastic and creep
behaviour of a thick-walled spheres subjected to cyclic pressure and temperature. In this study the steady state
behaviour of the pressure vessels using linear kinematic hardening in the plastic condition and Norton’s power law
in the creep condition has been investigated.
Aleayoub and Loghman (2010) performed the time-dependent creep stress redistribution analysis of functionally
graded thick-walled spheres subjected to an internal pressure and constant temperature. The materials properties
were assumed to change through the thickness according to power law. Nie et al (2011) proposed a technique to
tailor materials for functionally graded linear elastic hollow spheres. The volume fractions of a functionally graded
material were assumed to vary only with the radius and the material properties were obtained from either the rule of
mixtures or Mori–Tanaka scheme. Nejad et al (2011) presented an exact solution for creep stresses in isotropic and
homogeneous thick spherical pressure vessels. The creep behaviour of the material of the spherical vessel was
described by Norton’s law. Sadeghian and Toussi (2011) obtained the distributions of elastic and plastic thermal
stress in spherical pressure vessels made of functionally graded material. The properties of the material were
considered to be power function of radial distance. Pankaj (2011) used Seth’s transition theory to analyze the creep
stresses in an isotropic thick-walled spherical shell by finitesimal deformation. The sphere was subjected to internal
pressure and constant temperature. Bhatnagar and Arya (1975) applied finite strain theory for analyzing the creep
behaviour of thick-walled spherical pressure vessel under to internal pressure. The general theory was developed by
following Norton’s creep law and applied to find out the solution of creep problems. A mathematical model has been
developed to describe the study creep behaviour of composite material. Dai et al (2012) obtained an analytical
solution for time-dependent behaviour of a hollow sphere made of functionally graded piezoelectric material
subjected to coupling of multi-fields. The study presented the effects of graded index on creep behaviour of spherical
vessels and also led to the design of optimum functionally graded piezoelectric spherical shells. Material properties,
electric parameters, permeability, thermal conductivity and creep parameters were assumed to vary according to
power law. Bayat et al (2012) carried out thermo-mechanical analysis of functionally graded sphere under
mechanical loads and uniaxial steady-state thermal stresses. They assumed the Poisson’s ratio as constant while
other material properties vary non-linearly along radial distance.

Creep Analysis and Solution

In aluminium matrix composite materials subjected to creeping conditions, the effective strain rate,  e , is linked
with the effective stress,  e , with well established threshold stress,  o , based law:

e  M  e   0  n (1)

In Eqn. (1) M and  o are known as creep parameters and depends upon the material and application temperature
(T). In a composite, the size of reinforcement (P) and the quantity of reinforcement (V) are the key variables and the
creep parameters have been estimated from the creep results reported in literature for Al-SiCP composite and given
in our earlier work (Singh and Gupta, 2009).
 Sukhjinder Singh Sandhu et al./ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 3401–3408 3403

In this study a thick-walled spherical vessel composed of Al-SiCp composite has been taken and is subjected to
following boundary conditions,

(i) At inner radius (a); Radial stress (  r ) = - p (2)

(ii) At outer radius (b); Radial stress (  r ) = - q (3)

A small element of the spherical vessel is considered with equilibrium of forces in the radial direction and we may

write,

d r
r  2(    r ) (4)
dr
The constitutive equations of steady state creep in an isotropic composite material are given by,

 e
 r  [    ]
 e
r

(5)

e
  [    r ] (6)
2 e
e
z  [    r ] (7)
2 e

where  r , , z are radial, tangential and axial stresses.

In a spherical vessel, the plain strain condition was assumed for volume constancy i.e. the axial strain rate (  z ) is

zero. Also, due to spherical symmetry of spherical vessel, we may write,    z , and therefore,

e
 =  z = (    r ) (8)
2 e

and the well known von-Mises yield criterion also reduces to,

e =    r (9)

Solving equilibrium Eqn. (4) along with constitutive Eqs. (5) - (7) and von-Mises Eqn. (9), we may obtain the radial
stress as below,
n 1
1
n 2 n
r    3/ n
Y n  2 o ln r  Y1 (10)
3 M .r
3404 Sukhjinder Singh Sandhu et al./ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 3401–3408

where Y and Y1 are constants and can be evaluated by applying boundary conditions stated in Eqs. (2)-(3) in above
and their further substitution may leads to the final equation of radial stress given below,
 r  X [a 3 / n  r 3 / n ]  2 o ln( r / a )  p (11)
where,

X 
 p  q  2 I 2 ln(a / b)
( a  3 / n  b 3 / n )
Further the tangential stress can also be obtained as below,

 3    r 
   X   1  r 3 / n  a 3 / n   I 2   2 ln  1  p (12)
 2n    a 

Based on the mathematical solution present above, a computer code has been generated to estimate the creep stresses
and creep rates in the composite spherical vessel for different combinations of size of reinforcement and volume
percent of reinforcement. For calculations, the following data has been assumed,
(a) Inner radius of spherical vessel = 500mm
(b) Outer radius of spherical vessel = 800mm
(c) Internal pressure = 100MPa
(d) External pressure = 20 MPa.
The radial and tangential stresses at different radius of the spherical vessel are calculated from Eqs. (11) and (12).
The creep parameters M and  0 required during the calculations are taken from our earlier work (Singh and Gupta,
2009).
Results and Discussions
Effect of variation in reinforcement size
Figures. (1) to (3) shows the variation of radial, tangential and effective stresses in composite spherical vessel by
changing the size of reinforcement from 1.7micron to 45.9micron. The estimated stresses vary in similar fashion as
reported by (Bhatnagar and Arya, 1974). The radial stress, Fig. (1), remains negative over the entire radial distance
of the spherical vessel with maximum (100MPa) at the inner surface and minimum (20MPa) at the outer surface due
to boundary conditions (Eqs. 2 to 3). The tangential stress, Fig. 2, increases from the inner surface to the outer
surface of spherical vessel along with the radius. Unlike radial stress the tangential stresses increases from maximum
negative value at the inner surface, to become a maximum positive (tensile) value at the outer surface of the
spherical vessel. It can be easily concluded from Figures 1-3 that the change in the size of reinforcement does not
have a major effect on the steady state creep stresses in spherical vessel subjected to both internal pressure and
external pressure. The maximum variation observed in radial and tangential stresses is below 2%. On the other hand
the effective stress increases marginally with increasing particle size (from 1.7µm to 45.9µm) at inner radius and
decreases at outer radius with a cross over at a radius of 625mm of the spherical vessel. The maximum variation
noticed is less than 4.5% for larger size SiC particles (14.5µm to 45.9µm) when compared to sphere having smaller
size SiC particles (1.7µm).
The radial strain rate, tangential/axial strain rate, Eqs. (5) and (6), are linked to the effective strain rate, which
further linked to the difference of effective stress and threshold stress ( e   0 ) , as can be seen from creep law,
Eqn. (1). Therefore, to examine the effect of reinforcement size on the creep rates, the understanding of stress
difference is required. The variation of effective stress with size of reinforcement is small but the threshold,  o ,
decreases considerably from 19.83MPa to 16.29MPa with the increase in reinforcement size from 1.7micron 45.9
micron. When the strain of material becomes equal to the threshold value, the debonding happens within
reinforcement and the matrix material (Chen et al, 1997). Due to which the de-bonded particles are not able to
transfer the load. This harm caused by de-bonding of particles increases further with bigger size reinforcement, and
 Sukhjinder Singh Sandhu et al./ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 3401–3408 3405

therefore leads to reduction in the value of threshold stress. Due to this, the stress difference shows considerable
variation throughout the entire radial distance of the sphere with decreasing reinforcement size from 45.9µm to
1.7µm. As a result of this, the effective strain rate also decreases with decreasing SiCP size as shown in Fig. 4. The
radial and tangential/axial strain rates, Figs. (5)-(6), decreases from the inner surface to outer surface of the spherical
vessel. Throughout the sphere, the radial and tangential/axial strain rates have opposite nature due to plane strain
condition. The effect of reinforcement size on both tangential and radial strain rates is same as for effective strain
rate, Fig. 4. The tangential/axial and radial creep rates in the spherical vessel may reduce to a larger extent by using
smaller size particles of silicon carbide as reinforcement. The finer size particles will be greater in concentration for
the same volume percent of reinforcement and therefore leads to more load transfer to reinforcement with a decrease
in effective stress on the matrix material (Li Y, Langdon, 1997 and Li Y, Langdon TG 1999). Further, the
threshold stress observed for smaller size particles of reinforcement is higher than those noticed for larger size
particles. Therefore, the load transfer is more effective from the matrix to reinforcement and thereby reducing the
strain rates in spherical vessel with smaller sized particles.
Effect of variation in reinforcement volume content
The variation of radial, tangential and effective stresses in composite spherical vessel containing different
reinforcement volume content i.e. 10 vol.%, 20 vol.% and 30 vol.% is plotted in Figures 7-9. The radial stress, Fig.
7, does not vary on changing the volume content of silicon carbide particles except for a small variation in the
central region of the spherical vessel. Unlike reinforcement size, the increase in volume content of reinforcement
leads to considerable variation in the value of tangential stress, Figure 8. On increasing the volume content of SiC
particles from 10 vol.% to 30 vol.%, the compressive value of tangential stress decreases near the inner radius. On
the other hand the value of tangential stress becomes tensile at a radius of 550mm. Further, the tangential stress
increases at the outer radius of the sphere on increasing the volume content from 10 vol.% to 30 vol.%. Therefore, by
using more quantity of reinforcement, the tensile value of tangential stress increases at outer surface but decreases at
the inner surface of spherical vessel. The effect of volume content of reinforcement on effective stress (Figure 9), is
similar to those noticed for tangential stress but the trend is opposite in nature. The decrease in the value of effective
stress is relatively more noticeable at inner and outer radius compared to those observed for tangential stress. As
expected, the effective, tangential and radial strain rates (Figs. 10-12) decreases significantly with increasing volume
content of silicon carbide particles. The effective strain rate may be reduced due to decrease in creep parameter M
and increase in threshold stress  o with increasing volume percent of reinforcement. By increasing the volume
percentage of SiCp in the spherical vessel, the spacing between the particles reduces which leads to increase in the
value of threshold stress but decrease in creep parameter M, both these reasons contribute in reducing the strain rates
in the spherical vessel. (Mishra and Pandey, 1990) have also noticed that the creep rate in SiC based aluminium
composite could be reduced to significant extent by increasing the volume content.

60
-20
1.7 m
1.7 m
14.5 m
14.5 m 50
45.9 m
45.9 m

-40
Tangential Stess () MPa

40
Radial Stress (r ) MPa

30

-60
20

10
-80

-100 -10
500 550 600 650 700 750 800 500 550 600 650 700 750 800
Radius (r) mm Radius (r) mm

Figure 1 : Variation of Radial Stress Figure 2 : Variation of Tangential Stress

3406 Sukhjinder Singh Sandhu et al./ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 3401–3408

95
1.7 m
14.5 m
0.25
45.9 m
1.7 m
90 0.20 14.5 m
Effective Stress (e) MPa

45.9 m

-1
0.15

Effective Straine) s
85
0.10

0.05
80

0.00

75
500 550 600 650 700 750 800 500 550 600 650 700 750 800
Radius (r) mm Radius (r) mm

Figure 3 : Variation of Effective Stress. Figure 4 : Variation of Effective Strain Rates.

0 .1 2

1 .7  m
0 .1 0 1 4 .5  m
4 5 .9  m 0 .0 0
0 .0 8
-1
Tangential Straine) s

-0 .0 5
-1
Radial Straine) s

0 .0 6

-0 .1 0
0 .0 4

-0 .1 5
0 .0 2

0 .0 0 -0 .2 0

-0 .2 5
500 550 600 650 700 750 800 500 550 600 650 700 750 800
R a d iu s (r) m m R a d iu s ( r ) m m

Figure 5 : Variation of Tangential Strain Rates.

Figure 6 : Variation of Radial Strain Rates.

0 70

1 0 V o l% 1 0 V o l%
60
2 0 V o l%
-2 0 2 0 V o l% 3 0 V o l%
3 0 V o l% 50
Tangential Stess () MPa
Radial Stress (r ) MPa

-4 0 40

30
-6 0
20

-8 0 10

0
-1 0 0
-1 0

-1 2 0 -2 0
500 550 600 650 700 750 800 500 550 600 650 700 750 800
R a d iu s ( r ) m m R a d iu s ( r ) m m

Figure 7 : Variation of Radial Stress. Figure 8 : Variation of Tangential Stress.

 Sukhjinder Singh Sandhu et al./ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 3401–3408 3407

95 0.004
10 vol%
20 vol% 10 vol%
0.003
30 vol% 20 vol%
30 vol%
90 0.003
Effective Stress (e) MPa

-1
0.002

Effective Straine) s
0.002
85
0.002

0.000
80
0.000

0.000

75
500 550 600 650 700 750 800 500 550 600 650 700 750 800
Radius (r) mm Radius (r) mm

Figure 9 : Variation of Effective Stress.

Figure 10 : Variation of Effective Strain Rates.
0.002

10 Vol%
20 Vol%
0.002 30 Vol%
0 .0 0 0
-1
Tangential Straine) s

0 .0 0 0
0.000
-0 .0 0 1
-1
Radial Straine) s

-0 .0 0 2
0.000
-0 .0 0 2

-0 .0 0 3

0.000
-0 .0 0 3

-0 .0 0 3

-0 .0 0 4
500 550 600 650 700 750 800
500 550 600 650 700 750 800
Radius (r) mm R a d iu s (r) m m

Figure 11 : Variation of Tangential Strain Rates.

Figure 12 : Variation of Radial Strain Rates.

6. Conclusions

 The stress distributions in composite spherical vessels do not vary significantly for different arrangements
of reinforcement size and volume content. However a noticeable variation in tangential and radial stresses
with varying volume content of reinforcement has been observed.

 The tangential strain rate and radial strain rate in thick-wall spherical vessels decreases over entire radius.
The strain rates in the spherical vessel may be reduced to several orders by using particles smaller in size
and also increasing the quantity (vol.%) of particles.

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