• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3342-3351
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• 2023

High-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipelines in nuclear power plants (NPPs) have to meet high requirements for seismic performance. HDPE pipes have been proved to have good seismic performance, but joints are the weak links in the pipelines, and pipeline failures usually initiate from the defects inside the joints. Limited data are available on the seismic performance of butt-fusion joints of HDPE pipelines in NPPs, especially in terms of defects changes inside the joints after earthquakes. In this paper, full-scale shaking table tests were performed on a test section of suspended HDPE pipelines in an NPP, which included straight pipes, elbows, and 10 butt-fusion joints. During the tests, the seismic load-induced strain of the joints was analyzed by strain gauges, and it was much smaller than the internal pressure and self-weight-induced strain. Before and after the shaking table tests, phased array ultrasonic testing (PA-UT) was conducted to detect defects inside the joints. The locations, numbers, and dimensions of the defects were analyzed. It was found that defects were more likely to occur in elbows joints. No new defect was observed after the shaking table tests, and the defects showed no significant growth, indicating the satisfactory seismic performance of the butt-fusion joints.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.204-204
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• 2000

There are many weld defects such as surface crack, lack of fusion, and incomplete penetration(IP) in the butt joint weld of the existing steel bridges. The crack-like defects may significantly reduce the life of the structure. This paper presents the procedure and the results of the fatigue life assessment of the butt joints with weld defects in the existing steel girder bridge. The butt joint welds with incomplete penetration were instrumented with strain gages to determine the stress histogram under normal traffic. Based on the measured stress histogram the crack propagation analysis were performed for the fatigue life assessment. By using the suggested procedure and methodology, one can decide the time of periodic inspection and the necessity of repair of the butt joint welds with serious weld defects in the existing steel bridge. (Received October 1, 1999)

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.77-85
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• 2000

There are many weld defects such as surface crack, lack of fusion, and incomplete penetration (IP) in the butt joint weld of existing steel bridges. The crack-like defects may significantly reduce the fatigue life of the structure. This paper presents the procedure and the results of the fatigue life assessment of the butt joints with weld defects in the existing steel girder bridge. The butt joint welds with incomplete penetration were instrumented with strain gages to determine the stress histogram under normal traffic. Based on the measured stress histogram the crack propagation analysis were performed for the fatigue life assessment. By using the suggested procedure and methodology, one can decide the time of periodic inspection and the necessity of repair of the butt joint welds with serious weld defects in the existing steel bridge.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.68-74
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• 2016

Adoption of narrow gap welding shall be increased for the butt joint of thick plate, because the deformation and welding cost is reduced by decrease of cross-sectional area. However, sometimes narrow gap causes defects such as lack of fusion since it has small groove angle and narrow groove width. Therefore, GMAW, GTAW and SAW process shall be adopted to narrow gap welding with small bead hight and low deposition rate. In this study, Super-TIG welding using C-type strip was applied to semi-narrow gap butt joint in order to increase the welding productivity. High deposition rate 10kg/hr was obtained by high current 600A without undercut, humping bead and other welding defects. Measuring the mean and standard deviation of the melting depth to evaluate the developed processes, the fusion line type was determined by measuring the difference between maximum and minium melting depth. Furthermore, a model on arch fusion line and linear fusion line was suggested in order to prevent LF on groove wall in narrow gap butt welding.

• Journal of Adhesion and Interface
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-5
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• 2020

Heated tool joining is a popular method for joining parts made from plastics and composite materials. The method is commonly known as butt fusion in the plastic pipe industry and this paper provides a short introduction to the basics of producing a good butt fusion joint. The function of each of the essential parts of the butt fusion equipment is described followed by a presentation of the important parameters of the bonding process in reference to a well-established interfacial pressure versus time curve. The butt fusion procedure is then outlined with good practices that detail the preparation of equipment and pipes to be joined as well as the fusion joining process.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.98-107
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• 1998

There are many weld defects such as surface crack, lack of fusion, and imcomplete penetration in the butt joint of the existing steel bridges. The crack-like defects may significantly reduce the fatigue life of the structure. This paper presents the procedure and the results of the fatigue assessment of the butt joints with weld defect in the existing steel girder bridge. The butt joints with imcomple penetration were instrumented with strain gages to determine the stress histogram under normal traffic. Based on the measured stress histogram the crack propagation analyses were performed for the fatigue assesment. By using the suggested procedure and methodology, one can decide the time of periodic inspection and the necessity of repair of the butt joints with serious weld defects in the existing steel bridge.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.16-21
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• 2002

At present the Polyethylene piping, on supporting LNG is widely used because of it's disposition which are anti-corrosion flexible and so on. However, it has a few kinds of risk which are the possibility of piping leak, the character of easily corroded and so on. For giving solution, this study is intended to experiment the intension of the PE pipe after melted and when it is melting, the condition which are temperature and pressure is changed. the melting condition in temperature and pressure is adapted identically. After melting, it's joint is tested as intension. The result is that the effect of temperature in intension is more effective than pressure. In $210^{\circ}C$, $20kg/cm^{2}$ condition, the melting intension has the highest. Compare to the Butt melting joint and the Saddle melting joint, the former was $214kg/cm^{2}$ and the latter was $50kg/cm^{2}(bead\;2{\sim}3mm)$ and $73kg/cm^{2}(bead\;5{\sim}7mm)$. It means that the Butt melting method has more intensive than saddle. Consequently, the result shows that the liability and safety when pipe melting method is used will improve in pipe installation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.1142-1153
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• 2019

This paper presents the effect of fusion procedure on the fusion performance of the thermal butt fusion in the safety class III buried HDPE piping per various tests performed, including high speed tensile impact, free bend, blunt notched tensile, notched creep, and PENT tests. The suitability of fusion joints and qualification procedures was evaluated by comparing test results from the base material and buttfusion joints. From the notched tensile test result, it was found that the fused joints have much lower toughness than the base material. It was also identified that the notched tensile test is more desirable than the high speed tensile impact and free bend tests presented in the ASME Code Case N-755-3 as a fusion qualification test method. In addition, with regard to the single low-pressure fusion joint performances, the procedure given by the ISO 21307 was determined to be better that the one specified in the Code Case N-755-3.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.889-901
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• 2014

Very long life fatigue tests were carried out on 16Mn steel base metal and its welded joint by using the ultrasonic fatigue testing technique. Specimen shapes (round and plate) were considered for both the base metal and welded joint. The results show that the specimens present different S-N curve characteristics in the region of $10^5-10^9$ cycles. The round specimens showed continuously decreasing tendency while plate specimens showed a steep decreasing step and an asymptotic horizontal one. The fatigue strength of round specimen was found higher than plate specimen. The fatigue strength of as-welded joint was 45.0% of the base material for butt joint and 40% for cruciform as-welded joint. It was found that fracture can still occur in butt joint beyond $5{\times}10^6$ cycles. The cruciform joint has a fatigue limit in the very long life fatigue regime ($10^7-10^9$ cycles). Fatigue strength of butt as-welded joint was much higher as compared to cruciform as-welded joint. Improvement in fatigue strength of welded joint was found due to UPT. The observation of fracture surface showed crack mainly initiated from welded toe at fusion areas or geometric discontinuity sites at the surface in butt joint and from welded toe in cruciform joint.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.26-32
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• 2007

This study was carried out fusion-welded butt joints in SWS 490A high strength steel subjected to tensile test that load-deflection curve. The windowed or short-time Fourier transform(WFT or STFT) makes possible for the analysis of non-stationary or transient signals into a joint time-frequency domain and the wavelet transform(WT) is used to decompose the acoustic emission(AE) signal into various discrete series of sequences over different frequency bands. In this paper, for acoustic emission signal analysis to use a continuous wavelet transform, in which the Gabor wavelet base on a Gaussian window function is applied to the time-frequency domain. A wavelet transform is demonstrated and the plots are very powerful in the recognition of the acoustic emission features. As a result, the technique of acoustic emission is ideally suited to study variables which control time and stress dependent fracture or damage process in metallic materials.