Does anyone know a formula to calculate the crush pressure of a 150mm diameter pipe.

its 2mm thick and made of 316 stainless.

Cheers
Mikkel

For a short tube under axial compression it is simply stress ie load/cross sectional area compared to the the failure stress of the material.

For a long thin tube used in compression as a strut buckling has to be considered as a mode of failure, this is done using Euler's method.

[Edited on 23/7/10 by britishtrident]

Sorry i wasnt very clear in my first post.

Basically it is a long tube with a pressurized coolant around it, i need to calculate how much pressure the tube can take before it buckles

Off the top of my head, hoop stress calcs are also valid for external pressure, then to relate that to your material you'd use the compressive strength rather than tensile. That enough to be going along with for now? I could do a calc later for you.

Yes a thinwall hoop stresss calc should be valid, simple formula is Pr/2t

P= pressure
r = radius
t=thickness