A study on integrated design for improving fatigue life of common rail pipe considering stress concentration at complex shape

Common rail pipe in a clean diesel vehicle plays a key role in supplying fuel from a rail to an injector of each cylinder connecting engine under a repeated internal pressure. For satisfying EU emission standards, fuel injection pressure is increased to be over 200 MPa, and it causes stress concentration at the outer surface of neck part with discontinuity and complexity of shape of the pipe. For preventing folding defects and for improving a fatigue life, integrated design of a heading process and an autofrettage process are required because the methods for reducing the stress concentration by using changing design, material and adding heat treatments cause considerable effects on performance and price of the pipe. In this study, the heading process for checking folding defects of pipe head is performed by FEA, and an autofrettage process is designed for improving a fatigue life by considering the stress concentration at the complex and discontinuous shape. The optimal autofrettage pressure is required not only to relieve the stress concentration but also to be not beyond the allowable internal pressure for the process safety. The allowable internal pressure for the autofrettage process is determined by using theoretical analysis and FEA, and the stress distributions through the autofrettage process are obtained by using the commercial software, ANSYS-Workbench. On the basis of the FEA results, the autofrettage pressure is optimized, and SEM (scanning electron microscope) and fatigue tests were performed for prototypes to validate analysis of the integrated process design (Heading process and the autofrettage process).