Fully plastic failure stresses and allowable crack sizes for circumferentially surface-cracked pipes subjected to tensile loading

Hasegawa, Kunio*; Dvok, D.*; Mare, V.*; Strnadel, B.*; Li, Y. 

Fully plastic failure stress for circumferentially surface-cracked pipe subjected to tensile loading can be estimated by means of limit load criterion (LLC) based on the net-section stress approach. LLC of the first type (labelled LLC-1) was derived from the balance of uniaxial forces. LLC of the second type, derived from the balance of bending moments and axial forces (labelled LLC-2), is adopted in Section XI of the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineering) Code. From the literature survey of experimental data, failure stresses obtained by both types of LLCs were compared with the experimental data. It can be stated that failure stresses calculated by LLC-1 are better than those calculated by LLC-2 for shallow cracks. On the contrary, for deep cracks, LLC-2 predictions of failure stresses are fairly close to the experimental data. It can be stated that the allowable cracks given in Section XI of the ASME Code are conservative.