A Study of Effects of Pipe Geometry on FAD Curves for Austenitic Stainless Steel and Ferritic Steel Piping Materials

A comprehensive study of failure assessment diagrams for circumferentially surface-cracked austenitic stainless and ferritic steel pipes was conducted with the use of the finite element method (FEM). While the majority of the analyses were conducted using the line-spring/shell finite element method, some three-dimensional finite element analyses, conducted independently, are also reported in this paper. Comparison of the predictions of the line-spring/shell and three-dimensional analyses reinforce the validity of the former approach for surface-cracked pipes. The results indicated that the ASME Code Case N-494-2 applicable for ferritic steel piping appears reasonably conservative even for pipes with mean radius-to-wall thickness ratios of 20, whereas the results showed that the newly adopted Code Case N-494-3 for austenitic stainless steel piping requires a limit for pipe with mean radius-to-wall thickness ratios larger than 15. For consistency, the limitation of Rm/t ≤ 15 was incorporated in the approved final version of Code Case N-494-3, and was incorporated in Code Case N-494-2 as well. Because these Code cases are applicable only to Class 1 primary nuclear piping, which typically has values of Rm/t ≤ 15, this is not a significant limitation. It was also shown that the choice of definitions of membrane and bending stresses as well as the choice of F1 function values in calculating the elastic part of the J integral have a profound effect on the resulting FAD curves.