Vol.25, No.1, 2025, pp. 111–119
https://doi.org/10.69644/ivk-2025-01-0111

Pressure vessels are such type of engineering structure commonly used in many aspects in many industries such as aerospace industry, transport industry for transfer of fuels, nuclear reactors. In this paper we analyse the creep behaviour of an isotropic pressure vessel with hemispherical ends made of Al-SiC_p composite subjected to internal pressure and establish a mathematical model for the pressure vessel with hemispherical ends as a modular structure made of two parts: first part is the middle portion of the vessel as a cylinder subjected to internal pressure; and the second part as hemispherical ends of the pressure vessel subjected to internal pressure. We analyse the effect of reinforcement size (P = 1.7 mm, 14.5 mm, and 45.9 mm) on the creep behaviour and strength of pressure vessel. Threshold creep law has been used for this analysis, because due to apparently high activation energy and high stress exponent, Norton’s law is not preferable. We conclude that the creep rates for cylindrical and spherical parts of the pressure vessel composed of composite material with 1.7 mm size of reinforcement as compared with other cases with reinforcement sizes of 14.7 mm and 45.9 mm, show highly reliable character of the structure. This concludes that the structure with reinforcement size of 1.7 mm is highly reliable for the design.

Keywords: • modelling • pressure vessel • hemispherical ends • threshold creep law • creep