Inelastic stresses in spheres caused by thermal loading

The plastic deformation of different components of a power plant during service is of importance to the designer. Each component has its own geometry and application. Hollow sphere is a commonly used geometry in power plant industry. In this paper, a numerical method is presented for evaluating the thermoelastoplastic stress distribution in a hollow sphere with temperature-dependent properties. The sphere is assumed to be heated from the inside. A transient quasi-static uncoupled thermoelastoplastic solution is presented. For plastic deformation, Jiang's constitutive equations have been extended for the case of a material with temperature-dependent properties and non-linear strain hardening. The results are compared with the results obtained using different approaches. A close agreement between the present method and other techniques is found. The problem was also tackled for a case where material properties are not temperature dependent. The conclusion is reached that temperature dependency of material is an important factor in determining the results.