Design of shrink-fit mold for portable steel tube manufacturing and determination of suitable cord blade angle

LPG cylinders are pressurized containers that provide safe storage of flammable and explosive LPG gas. LPG cylinder manufacturing is important in terms of ensuring the storage of pressurized liquefied petroleum gas. The most important issue in LPG cylinder manufacturing is that the lower and upper shells can be joined in a way that they cannot be separated from each other and that no welding seam defects are seen in the inner parts. In order to ensure this, it is necessary to perform the correct welded joint process. A problem-free welding process depends on the welding process parameters and the adjustment of the cord blade angle. In LPG cylinder manufacturing, the welding parameters are selected depending on the sheet thickness as permitted by the standards. For this reason, the cord blade angle becomes important for the joint process. In this study, the appropriate tight fit design for the tubes of a company that currently manufactures LPG cylinders from portable steel material and the appropriate cord knife angle was determined. The company currently uses a 15° blade cord angle in its designs, and in this thesis study, in addition to these angles, 8°, 10° and 12° blade cord angles were selected and LPG cylinders with these selected angles were manufactured and experiments were carried out in accordance with the standards. In the thesis study, it was concluded that the most appropriate blade cord angle in LPG steel cylinder manufacturing is 8°.