I have been looking into the forces required to break a hypothetical aluminium test piece, in order to come up with a set of dimensions that keeps the pressure needed within acceptably safe limits.
The hose on the enerpac type ram I'm using is rated to 10,000 psi. That said, the fittings that I have to connect a gauge in the system are only good for 6000 psi. So there is my limit.
The 6082 plate I intend to make the test pieces from is 6mm thick. A 10mm wide gauge portion of this material would thus have a cross sectional area of 60mm square.
As the average UTS of 6082 T6 is 300MPa, or 300N/mm^2, the force required to break a piece of this area is 18kN.
18kN translates to 1835 kgf. The surface area of the hydraulic piston is about 7 x 10^-4 metres square. As pressure is force divided by area, this gives 2621428 kgf/m^2.
In more familiar units this comes out to about 3730 psi, or 257 bar. This is well within the acceptable safe range for the fittings and hoses being used.
This time out my work has involved a project with an aluminium TIG welding element. Here is a photograph of a joint I made yesterday. The test pieces will be cut from a plate that has been halved and then welded back together again with a seam similar to this one. The control piece will of course be a solid section, that we now know will take about 3700 psi to break.
What figure can we expect a newly welded, non heat treated test specimen to break at? Assigning a value of about 190MPa as our UTS, using the calculation method above gives a force of 11.4kN. This translates to 1162.5 kgf. To produce this using the enerpac type jack will require a pressure in the region of 2360 psi or 163 bar.
Theory is one thing; practice can be downright embarrasing. We'll just have to wait and see.
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