scholarly journals A plastic stress intensity factor approach to turbine disk structural integrity assessment

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (37) ◽  
pp. 193-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Shlyannikov ◽  
A. Zakharov ◽  
R. Yarullin
Author(s):  
Stéphane Marie ◽  
Stéphane Chapuliot ◽  
Dominique Moinereau ◽  
Malik Ait-Bachir ◽  
Clémentine Jacquemoud ◽  
...  

A new appendix is introduced in the RSE-M code, devoted to in-service operation on PWRs, dealing with the assessment of a defect in the Reactor Pressure Vessel. This new appendix reflects the current French practice and introduces a second criterion to consider the Warm Pre-Stress (WPS) effect. This appendix is applicable to under clad defects and defects partially in the cladding, and covers nominal, incidental and accidental conditions. The main criterion is the classical comparison between the stress intensity factor (amplified to account for the plasticity of the cladding) and the material toughness (taking into account the irradiation induced ageing). For incidental and accidental situations, if the conventional criterion is not verified, an alternative criterion is proposed to take into account the WPS effect. The criterion corresponds to the ACE criterion developed by AREVA, CEA and EDF taking into account the effective material toughness depending on the loading history. The present paper presents this new RSE-M appendix and provides some basic elements of justification and validation on the ACE criterion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Lu ◽  
Jinya Katsuyama ◽  
Yinsheng Li

Abstract Structural integrity assessment of reactor pressure vessels (RPVs) is essential for the safe operation of nuclear power plants. For RPVs in pressurized water reactors (PWRs), the assessment should be performed by considering neutron irradiation embrittlement and pressurized thermal shock (PTS) events. To assess the structural integrity of an RPV, a traditional method is usually employed by comparing fracture toughness of the RPV material with the stress intensity factor (KI) of a crack postulated near the RPV inner surface. When an underclad crack (i.e., a crack beneath the cladding of an RPV) is postulated, KI of this crack can be increased owing to the plasticity effect of cladding. This is because the yield stress of cladding is lower than that of base metal and the cladding may yield earlier than base metal. In this paper, detailed three-dimensional (3D) finite element analyses (FEAs) were performed in consideration of the plasticity effect of cladding for underclad cracks postulated in Japanese RPVs. Based on the 3D FEA results, a plasticity correction method was proposed on KI calculations of underclad cracks. In addition, the effects of RPV geometries and loading conditions were investigated using the proposed plasticity correction method. Moreover, the applicability of the proposed method to the case which considers the hardening effect of materials after neutron irradiation was also investigated. All of these results indicate that the proposed plasticity correction method can be used for KI calculations of underclad cracks and is applicable to structural integrity assessment of Japanese RPVs containing underclad cracks.


Author(s):  
Renaud Bourga ◽  
Bin Wang ◽  
Philippa Moore ◽  
Yin Jin Janin

Based on detailed 3D finite element (FE) analyses, idealized and non-idealized axial through-wall flaws were evaluated in a cylinder under internal pressure. The key parameters (Stress Intensity Factor, Reference stress, and Crack Opening Area) from widely accepted structural integrity assessment procedures (BS 7910 and API 579-1/ASME FFS-1) were explored and compared between idealized (perpendicular straight-sided flaw) and non-idealized geometry. The effect of crack shape on the evolution of stress intensity factors and crack opening areas along the crack front were also investigated. Non-idealized crack shapes have been modelled assuming a straight crack front with different internal and external crack lengths. The influence of crack shape has been evaluated by varying the crack front location and lengths ratios. The current findings highlight the significance of assessing a more realistic crack shape and should be considered in a leak-before-break (LBB) analysis. A non-idealized crack has a significantly smaller crack opening area than the equivalent idealized through-wall crack. Therefore the leakage rate at this stage of crack growth will be lower than predicted by standard solutions. Stress intensity factor solutions should also take the crack shape variation into account with regards to fatigue crack growth as a surface flaw propagates through-thickness.


1982 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 754-760 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. S. Theocaris ◽  
C. I. Razem

The KIII-stress intensity factor in an edge-cracked plate submitted to antiplane shear may be evaluated by the reflected caustic created around the crack tip, provided that a purely elastic behavior exists at the crack tip [1]. For a work-hardening, elastic-plastic material, when stresses at the vicinity of the crack tip exceed the yield limit of the material, the new shape of caustic differs substantially from the corresponding shape of the elastic solution. In this paper the shape and size of the caustics created at the tip of the crack, when small-scale yielding is established in the vicinity of the crack tip, were studied, based on a closed-form solution introduced by Rice [2]. The plastic stress intensity factor may be evaluated from the dimensions of the plastic caustic. Experimental evidence with cracked plates made of opaque materials, like steel, corroborated the results of the theory.


Author(s):  
Wei Lu ◽  
Zheng He

As one of the most critical barrier of pressurized-water reactor, Reactor Pressurized Vessel (RPV) is exposed to high temperature, high pressure and irradiation. During the lifetime of RPV, the core belt material will become brittle under the influence of neutron irradiation. The ductile-brittle transition temperature will increase and upper shelf energy will decrease. Thus the structure integrity evaluation of RPV concerning brittle fracture is one of the most important tasks of RPV lifetime management. The non-LOCA accident of Rancho Seco nuclear power plant in 1978 indicates that the emergent cooling transients the sudden cooling down may accompany with the re-pressurize of main loop. The combination of pressure loads and thermal loads may induce a large tensile stress in RPV internal surface, which is the so called pressurized thermal shock (PTS). Due to the existence of welding cladding on the inner surface of RPV, the discontinuity of stress distribution on the cladding-base interface of RPV wall will make calculation of stress-intensity-factor (SIF) difficult. In present research, a two dimensional axial-symmetrical model is built and Finite Element Method (FEM) is adopted to calculate the transient thermal distribution and stress distribution. The influence function method is adopted to calculate crack SIF. Stress distributions in the base and cladding are decomposed respectively and SIFs are calculated respectively to obtain the crack SIF. ASME method is used to calculate the fracture toughness. Present PTS program is validated by the comparative benchmark calculation (the International Comparative Assessment Study of Pressurized Thermal-Shock in Reactor Pressure Vessels). The calculated SIF from present program lies in the reasonable region of the comparing group results. A LOCA transient is investigated with a semi-elliptical surface crack on the RPV beltline region. The temperature and stress distribution along the vessel wall during the transient are given. The stress intensity factors at the deepest and interface point are given respectively. The integrity of RPV under PTS transient is evaluated by comparing stress intensity factor with fracture toughness. Results indicate that the stress intensity factor will not exceed the fracture toughness of the RPV material. The difference between the stress intensity factor and fracture toughness reach a minimum value at the crack tip temperature 20°C. Present research gives a reliable and efficient program to perform RPV structure integrity assessment with surface crack under PTS, which is suitable for further parameter analysis and probabilistic analysis.


Author(s):  
Kiminobu Hojo ◽  
Naoki Ogawa ◽  
Yoichi Iwamoto ◽  
Kazutoshi Ohoto ◽  
Seiji Asada ◽  
...  

A reactor pressure vessel (RPV) head of PWR has penetration holes for the CRDM nozzles, which are connected with the vessel head by J-shaped welds. It is well-known that there is high residual stress field in vicinity of the J-shaped weld and this has potentiality of PWSCC degradation. For assuring stress integrity of welding part of the penetration nozzle of the RPV, it is necessary to evaluate precise residual stress and stress intensity factor based on the stress field. To calculate stress intensity factor K, the most acceptable procedure is numerical analysis, but the penetration nozzle is very complex structure and such a direct procedure takes a lot of time. This paper describes applicability of simplified K calculation method from handbooks by comparing with K values from finite element analysis, especially mentioning crack modeling. According to the verified K values in this paper, fatigue crack extension analysis and brittle fracture evaluation by operation load were performed for initial crack due to PWSCC and finally structural integrity of the penetration nozzle of RPV head was confirmed.


Author(s):  
Sang-Min Lee ◽  
Jeong-Soon Park ◽  
Jin-Su Kim ◽  
Young-Hwan Choi ◽  
Hae-Dong Chung

Elastic-plastic fracture mechanics as well as linear-elastic fracture mechanics may be applied to evaluate a flaw in ferritic low alloy steel components for operating conditions when the material fracture resistance is controlled by upper shelf toughness behavior. In this paper, the distribution of the stress intensity factor along a corner crack using elastic-plastic fracture mechanics technique is investigated to assess the effect of a structural factor on mechanical loads in pressurizer vent nozzle penetration weld. For this purpose, the stress intensity factor and plastic zone correction of a corner crack are calculated under internal pressure, thermal stress and residual stress in accordance with Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) equation and Irwin’s approach, respectively. The resulting stress intensity factor and plastic zone correction were compared with those obtained from Structural Integrity Associates (SIA) and Kinectrics, and were observed to be good agreement with Kinectrics results.


Author(s):  
Diego F. Mora ◽  
Roman Mukin ◽  
Oriol Costa Garrido ◽  
Markus Niffenegger

Abstract In this paper, an integrity assessment of a reference Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) under Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) is performed. The assessment is based on a multi-step simulation scheme, which includes the thermo-hydraulic, thermo-mechanical and fracture mechanics analyses. The proposed strategy uses a three dimensional (3D) finite element model (FEM) of the RPV with the Abaqus code to solve the thermo-mechanical problem for the scenario of a Large-Break Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LBLOCA). In order to obtain the boundary conditions for the thermal analysis, the thermo-hydraulic results from a 3D RPV model developed in the system code TRACE are used. The fracture mechanics analysis is carried out on submodels defined on the areas of interest. Submodels containing cracks or flaws are also located in regions of the RPV where there might be a concentration of stresses during the PTS. The calculation of stress intensity factor (SIF) makes use of the eXtended FEM (XFEM) approach. The computed SIF of the postulated cracks at the inner surface of the RPV wall are compared with the ASME fracture toughness curve of the embrittled RPV material. For different transient scenarios, the boundary conditions were previously calculated with a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. However, cross-verification of the results has shown consistency of both CFD and TRACE models. Moreover, the use of the later is very convenient for the integrity analyses as it is clearly less computationally expensive than CFD. Therefore, it can be used to calculate different PTS scenarios including different break sizes and break locations. The main findings from fracture mechanics analyses of the RPV subjected to LBLOCA are summarized and compared. The presented results also allow us to study the influence of the dynamic cooling plume on the stress intensity factor in more detail than with the conventional one-dimensional method. However, the plumes calculated with both approaches are different. How much this difference affects the integrity assessment of the RPV is discussed in the paper.


2000 ◽  
Vol 66 (645) ◽  
pp. 1039-1045 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuniharu USHIJIMA ◽  
Dai-Heng CHEN ◽  
Naoto KITTE

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