An Experimental-Numerical Determination of the Three-Dimensional Autofrettage Residual Stress Field Incorporating Bauschinger Effects

Autofrettage of large-caliber gun barrels is used to increase the elastic strength of the tube and is based on the permanent expansion of the cylinder bore, using either hydraulic pressure or an oversized swage mandrel. The theoretical solution of the autofrettage problem involves different yield criteria, the Bauschinger effect, and the recalculation of the residual stress field post barrel’s machining. Accurate stress-strain data and their appropriate numerical representations are needed as input for the numerical analysis of the residual stress field due to autofrettage. The purpose of the present work is to develop a three-dimensional (3D) numerical solution for both the hydraulic and the swage autofrettage processes incorporating the Bauschinger effect, using an accurate numerical representation of the experimentally measured material behavior. The new 3D computer code that was developed is capable of determining the stresses, strains, displacements, and forces throughout the entire autofrettage process. The numerical results were validated by an instrumented standard swage autofrettage process. The numerical model was found to excellently reproduce the experimentally measured pushing force as well as the permanent bore enlargement of the barrel. The calculated tangential stresses and the measured ones follow a similar pattern, but their numerical magnitude differs considerably. A wide discrepancy in both pattern and magnitude was found between the calculated and the measured axial stresses. These discrepancies seem to stem from the exact details of the mandrel’s insertion into the tube and are now under further investigation. However, in order to further validate the numerical code an hydraulic autofrettage experiment will be performed, which will hopefully eliminate the swage autofrettage discrepancies.