Fluid End Blocks: Numerical Analysis of Autofrettage and Reautofrettage Based Upon A True Material Model

Fluid end blocks (FEBs) are the most important components of hydraulic fracturing pumps. A potential important application of the hydraulic autofrettage process (HAP) is to strengthen the fatigue-prone FEBs. This creates a favorable compressive residual stress field near to the critical surface locations within the component and serves to increase its pressure-bearing capacity and/or improve lifetime. This requires a fundamental understanding and modeling of the complex mechanics of the HAP in order to accurately predict such residual stresses. The key outstanding modeling issue is the complex material behavior, dominated by the Bauschinger effect and associated with reversed yielding. This effect differs throughout the FEB. It has been modeled for plane axisymmetric cylinders but has not previously been incorporated into FEB analyses. In this paper, a newly developed finite element analysis (FEA)-based user programmable function (UPF), featuring true material constitutive behavior, i.e., replicating an existing Bauschinger-effect characterization (BEC), is adopted to accurately simulate the HAP and quantitatively investigate the stress-strain evolution and residual stress fields throughout the FEB. This simulation is then compared with FEA modeling by a traditional bilinear kinematic hardening material model to indicate the importance of the accuracy of the material constitutive model in determining appropriate residual stresses and strains. An autofrettage pressure of 500MPa generally achieves net compressive hoop stresses at each of four critical crossbore location. Finally, a prospective re-autofrettage sequence is described; approximate modeling suggests an improvement that might permit operation at higher working pressure.