Analysis of Residual Stress in the Rotational Autofrettage of Thick-Walled Disks

Autofrettage is a means of generating compressive residual stresses at the inner side of a thick-walled cylinder or hollow disk by causing nonhomogeneous plastic deformation of the material at the inner side. The presence of residual compressive stresses at the inner region of the cylinder/disk enhance the pressure withstanding capacity, fatigue life and the resistance to stress corrosion cracking of the component. Despite the hydraulic and swage autofrettage are the widely practiced processes in industries, there are certain disadvantages associated with these processes. In view of this, in the recent years, researchers have proposed new methods of achieving autofrettage. Rotational autofrettage is such a recently proposed autofrettage method for achieving the beneficial compressive residual stresses in the cylinders. In the present work, the rotational autofrettage is studied for a thick-walled hollow circular disk. A theoretical analysis of the residual stresses produced in the disk after unloading are obtained assuming plane stress condition, Tresca yield criterion and its associated flow rule. The analysis takes into account the effect of strain hardening during plastic deformation. Further, the effect of residual stresses in the typical SS304 and aluminum disk is studied by subjecting them into three different types of loads viz., internal pressure, radial temperature difference, and rotational speed individually. A three-dimensional (3D) finite element method (FEM) validation of the theoretical stresses during rotational autofrettage of a disk is also presented.