The 2019 ASME Pressure Vessels & Piping Conference was held on July 14-19 in San Antonio, USA. The PVP Conference is known as an outstanding international technical forum through which participants can exchange opinions and ideas with leading experts from industry and academia, and deepen their knowledge base through exposure to diverse topics.
The 2019 edition attracted 895 participants from 37 countries and regions. As a routine, one research paper was awarded the Outstanding Technical Paper of the ASME Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology. The 2018 Outstanding Technical Paper went to Viscoelastic and Damage Model of Polyethylene Pipe Material for Slow Crack Growth Analysis, which was co-penned by ZHANG Yue (a Ph.D. candidate in the Institute of Process Equipment at Zhejiang University), LUO Xiangpeng and SHI Jianfeng. It is the first time that a Chinese paper has won this award since 2006.
In this paper, a numerical model is proposed by taking into account the viscoelastic and damage effect of polyethylene material. ZHANG Yue et al. describe the material behavior on the basis of the linear viscoelastic integral constitutive model, along with damage effects in effective configuration. They derive a 3D incremental form for the damage viscoelastic model. It is found that the curve of tensile displacement via time, as well as the curve of crack opening displacement via time from numerical results fit well with those from the standard PENT test. This paper is of significant value for the prediction and assessment of slow crack growth in polyethylene and other polymer materials.
The ASME Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology is the premier publication for the highest-quality research and interpretive reports on the design, analysis, materials, fabrication, construction, inspection, operation, and failure prevention of pressure vessels, piping, pipelines, power and heating boilers, heat exchangers, reaction vessels, pumps, valves, and other pressure and temperature-bearing components, as well as the nondestructive evaluation of critical components in mechanical engineering applications.
