BENDING STRESSES AT LONGITUDINAL WELD JOINTS OF PRESSURIZED CYLINDRICAL-SHELLS DUE TO ANGULAR DISTORTION

This article presents a simple second-order theory for the determinati on of bending stresses which arise at the longitudinal welded joint of a pressurized, cylindrical shell subject to peaking, i.e., angular mi salignment. Although this problem has been studied quite extensively o ver the years by a few authors and a few versions of simple formulas a re available for the calculations of bending stresses at the welded jo int, it is noted these formulas show considerable discrepancies when c ompared with the finite element solutions. As the additional bending s tresses at the weld joint will lead to a shorter fatigue life of the j oint, an improved theory to predict the peak stress at the weld joint, such as the one presented in this article, would be important and of interest to the design engineer and vessel inspector. The present theo ry has been validated against finite element results and shown to be e xtremely accurate.