Creep Analysis of Orthotropic Rotating Cylinder

The stress and strain-rate distributions in the wall of a hollow thick-walled circular cylinder, rotating about its own axis with a constant angular speed, have been obtained using Norton’s law for the steady-state creep. The cylinder is assumed to be made of a homogeneous and orthotropic material. The numerical computations, for a number of steels and steel alloys commonly used to manufacture the cylinder, have been carried out for three cases of anisotropy. The effect of anistropy and of exponent n in creep law has been studied. It is observed that the stress and strain-rate distributions are significantly affected by the anisotropy of material and the value of exponent n. It is also noticed that the values of the effective stress for an anisotropic material for which the ratios of axial to tangential strain rate and of radial to tangential strain rate are equal to 1.2, are lower than the corresponding values for an isotropic material for which these ratios are 1.0. And, because of a power law between effective strain rate and effective stress, much lower values of the effective strain rate for the foregoing anisotropic material than those for the isotropic material will be obtained. Thus the use of the aforementioned anisotropic material may be beneficial for the manufacture of the cylinders because (i) it will result in a longer life for the cylinders (because of the lowest strain rate), or (ii) it will allow the cylinder to sustain larger forces without a risk of failure under creep.