Copyright © 2009 Stephen John Hardy and Ragba Mohamed Abdusslam. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The elastic compensation method proposed by Mackenzie and Boyle is used to estimate the upper and lower bound limit (collapse) loads for one-piece aluminium aerosol cans, which are thin-walled pressure vessels subjected to internal pressure loading. Elastic-plastic finite element predictions for yield and collapse pressures are found using axisymmetric models. However, it is shown that predictions for the elastic-plastic buckling of the vessel base require the use of a full three-dimensional model with a small unsymmetrical imperfection introduced. The finite element predictions for the internal pressure to cause complete failure via collapse fall within the upper and lower bounds. Hence the method, which involves only elastic analyses, can be used in place of complex elastic-plastic finite element analyses when upper and lower bound estimates are adequate for design purposes. Similarly, the lower bound value underpredicts the pressure at which first yield occurs.