Stress intensity factor calculation of steel-lined hoop-wrapped cylinders with internal semi-elliptical circumferential crack

The purpose of this paper is to present mode I stress intensity factor for a circumferential semi-elliptical crack on the inner surface of a hoop-wrapped steel-lined CNG cylinder. The stress intensity factors along the crack front are directly computed by 3D finite element method for a wide range of variations of the crack geometry. Also influence of many parameters such as cylinder internal pressure, composite layer thickness, composite material properties and undertaking Auto-Frettage pressure are studied on the stress intensity factor of the crack and some conclusive results are drawn. For the sake of validation of the results and because of lack of the results for a circumferential semi-elliptical crack in the literature, a semi-elliptical axial crack in a composite hoop-wrapped cylinder has been modeled and the results have been compared with those in the literature showing a good agreement.