No Cover Image

E-Thesis 406 views 1327 downloads

Finite element analysis of the design and manufacture of thin-walled pressure vessels used as aerosol cans. / Ragba Mohamed Abdussalam

Swansea University Author: Ragba Mohamed Abdussalam

Abstract

Thin-walled cylinders are used extensively in the food packaging and cosmetics industries. The cost of material is a major contributor to the overall cost and so improvements in design and manufacturing processes are always being sought. Shape optimisation provides one method for such improvements....

Full description

Published: 2006
Institution: Swansea University
Degree level: Doctoral
Degree name: Ph.D
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42323
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Abstract: Thin-walled cylinders are used extensively in the food packaging and cosmetics industries. The cost of material is a major contributor to the overall cost and so improvements in design and manufacturing processes are always being sought. Shape optimisation provides one method for such improvements. Aluminium aerosol cans are a particular form of thin-walled cylinder with a complex shape consisting of truncated cone top, parallel cylindrical section and inverted dome base. They are manufactured in one piece by a reverse-extrusion process, which produces a vessel with a variable thickness from 0.31 mm in the cylinder up to 1.31 mm in the base for a 53 mm diameter can. During manufacture, packaging and charging, they are subjected to pressure, axial and radial loads and design calculations are generally outside the British and American pressure vessel codes. 'Design-by-test' appears to be the favoured approach. However, a more rigorous approach is needed in order to optimise the designs. Finite element analysis (FEA) is a powerful tool for predicting stress, strain and displacement behaviour of components and structures. FEA is also used extensively to model manufacturing processes. In this study, elastic and elastic-plastic FEA has been used to develop a thorough understanding of the mechanisms of yielding, 'dome reversal' (an inherent safety feature, where the base suffers elastic-plastic buckling at a pressure below the burst pressure) and collapse due to internal pressure loading and how these are affected by geometry. It has also been used to study the buckling behaviour under compressive axial loading. Furthermore, numerical simulations of the extrusion process (in order to investigate the effects of tool geometry, friction coefficient and boundary conditions) have been undertaken. Experimental verification of the buckling and collapse behaviours has also been carried out and there is reasonable agreement between the experimental data and the numerical predictions.
Keywords: Materials science.;Industrial engineering.;Packaging.
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering