Thread: Wilcats and Pressure

Thinking back to my old life as an engineer I seem to remember that a cylindrical pressure vessel exhibits twice the force on the ends as it does on the sides. So that makes the bolt lugs the most worked surface in the action (weakest link in the chain so to say).

Now pressure is force divided by area or

P = F/A

Therefore force equals

F = PxA

So the bigger the area (the internal diameter of the case) the bigger the force. So a small cartridge loaded to 65000psi will exhibit much less force on the lugs than a magnum case loaded at 65000psi.

Now every material has both tensile and compressive properties, and once those are exceeded it’s considered a fail. Most engineers build in a FOS (factory of safety) to give some room for error, so if you choose to load above a certain point you are eating into this FOS.

Basically you can't beat the maths on these things...load it too high and it will fail eventually through fatigue.

kj