Stress Analysis of Rotating Functionally Graded Cylindrical Pressure Vessels of Variable Thickness

Rotating cylindrical pressure vessel is an essential part of industries. With the advent of FGM’s, research on analysis and fabrication is intended to increase its performance. The current work presents stress analysis of variable thickness rotating cylindrical pressure vessels made of functionally graded materials. The material properties are graded in axial direction using three different grading schemes, namely exponential, Mori–Tanaka, and power-law scheme, and the effect of these property distributions on the stresses and deformation were investigated. Shells were subjected to variable internal pressure under clamped–clamped boundary condition. The analysis was carried out using finite element method based on stationarity of total potential. The axial distribution of stresses and deformation over the geometry for different angular velocities, pressure distribution exponent, and axial layers were investigated, and a comparison was made between homogeneous shell and functionally graded shells. Results obtained reveal that the FGM shells have significant improvement in the quality and can be employed more effectively than the homogeneous shells for rotating pressure vessels of variable thickness. The results of the present method are validated, and good agreement is seen.