
460 10 Thick-walled Cylinders and Disks
(ii) the thermal stress terms are proportional to E
α
T ;
(iii) a body that is subjected to a uniform increase in temperature increases in size,
but is unstressed unless the boundaries are restrained in some way.
When a car is moving at 60 mph (88 ft/s), the wheels (and hence the brake disks)
will be rotating at about 70 rad/s (670 rpm), where we have assumed a tyre outer ra-
dius of 1.25 ft. This is a low rotational speed and we therefore anticipate a small con-
tribution to the stresses from the rotational terms. To confirm this, calculate
ρΩ
2
r
2
using the largest (outer) radius for r. The density of steel is about 7.4×10
−4
slug/in
3
,
so
ρΩ
2
r
2
= 7.4 ×10
−4
×70
2
×5
2
= 91 psi .
This is small compared with the failure strength of typical steels (≈ 30 ksi) and with
the thermal stresses calculated in Example 10.2.
The grinding wheel is heated at the outer radius as a result of the grinding process.
Grinding wheels are made of ceramic cutting materials bonded by a filler and will
generally have low thermal conductivity. Thus, only the surface layers of the wheel
can be expected to experience a significant increase in temperature. This might cause
significant local circumferential stresses (
σ
θθ
), but they will be compressive since the
material wants to expand and is being prevented from doing so. Brittle materials are
much stronger in compression than in tension. We also see from Example 10.1 above
that the maximum stresses due to rotation occur at the centre of the wheel rather than
the outside, so the questions of possible failure due to rotational stresses and due to
local thermal stresses at the outer edge are independent of each other.
Preliminary thinking of this kind (perhaps supplemented by a few simple esti-
mates) is essential when deciding which stress calculations to perform for design
purposes.
10.3 Cylindrical pressure vessels
Figure 10.7 shows a thick-walled cylindrical vessel of inside radius a and outside
radius b, subjected to internal pressure p
0
. Vessels of this kind are only needed when
the pressure to be contained is very large. Boilers, gas tanks etc. generally oper-
ate at pressures small enough to permit the wall thickness to be small in compari-
son with the radius, in which case the simpler membrane theory of Chapter 8 can
be used. Applications of thick-walled vessels include processes requiring extremely
high pressure, such as the manufacture of synthetic diamonds, and testing machines
to determine the properties of materials under high hydostatic pressure.
6
6
An important case is the determination of the viscosity of lubricants. In gearing and rolling
contact bearings, the lubricant is squeezed to very high pressure and successful lubrication
for such applications depends on the lubricant having a high viscosity at high pressures.