Analysis of fatigue life for tube trailer cylinders

Abstract

Risk of fatigue failure exists in the tube trailer cylinders under the condition of internal pressure variation and inertial load caused through road transport. In order to estimate the safety state of the cylinders under the action of alternating load, the model of certain geometry sizes is built based on the widely used tube trailer cylinders. The fatigue analysis of tube trailer gas cylinders is made aiming at the action of the internal pressure and the inertial load. The fatigue life distribution of cylinders is obtained under the condition of different loads through the numerical simulation by ANSYS Workbench. The analysis results show that under internal pressure, gas cylinders have limited fatigue life, but can satisfy the requirements; when the inertial load exceeds a certain value, natural gas cylinders of tube trailer is under finite life state, which does not meet the requirements of strength, therefore the inertial load should be controlled.

Keywords

• fatigue
• tube trailer
• natural gas cylinder
• fatigue life
• finite element analysis