• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.35-48
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• 2015

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the long-term performance of various concrete composites in natural marine environment prevailing in the Gulf region. Durability assessment studies of such nature are usually carried out under aggressive environments that constitute seawater, chloride and sulfate laden soils and wind, and groundwater conditions. These studies are very vital for sustainable development of marine and off shore reinforced concrete structures of industrial design such as petroleum installations. First round of testing and evaluation, which is presented in this paper, were performed by standard tests under laboratory conditions. Laboratory results presented in this paper will be corroborated with test outcome of ongoing three years field exposure conditions. The field study will include different parameters of investigation for high performance concrete including corrosion inhibitors, type of reinforcement, natural and industrial pozzolanic additives, water to cement ratio, water type, cover thickness, curing conditions, and concrete coatings. Like the laboratory specimens, samples in the field will be monitored for corrosion induced deterioration signs and for any signs of failureover initial period ofthree years. In this paper, laboratory results pertaining to microsilica (SF), ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS), epoxy coated rebars and calcium nitrite corrosion inhibitor are very conclusive. Results affirmed that the supplementary cementing materials such as GGBS and SF significantly impacted and enhanced concrete resistivity to chloride ions penetration and hence decrease the corrosion activities on steel bars protected by such concretes. As for epoxy coated rebars applications under high chloride laden conditions, results showed great concern to integrity of the epoxy coating layer on the bar and its stability. On the other hand corrosion inhibiting admixtures such as calcium nitrite proved to be more effective when used in combination with the pozzolanic additives such as GGBS and microsilica.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.820-830
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• 2016

Pipe wall thinning by flow-accelerated corrosion and various types of erosion is a significant and costly damage phenomenon in secondary piping systems of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Most NPPs have management programs to ensure pipe integrity due to wall thinning that includes periodic measurements for pipe wall thicknesses using nondestructive evaluation techniques. Numerous measurements using ultrasonic tests (UTs; one of the nondestructive evaluation technologies) have been performed during scheduled outages in NPPs. Using the thickness measurement data, wall thinning rates of each component are determined conservatively according to several evaluation methods developed by the United States Electric Power Research Institute. However, little is known about the conservativeness or reliability of the evaluation methods because of a lack of understanding of the measurement error. In this study, quantitative models for UT thickness measurement deviations of nuclear pipes and fittings were developed as the first step for establishing an optimized thinning evaluation procedure considering measurement error. In order to understand the characteristics of UT thickness measurement errors of nuclear pipes and fittings, round robin test results, which were obtained by previous researchers under laboratory conditions, were analyzed. Then, based on a large dataset of actual plant data from four NPPs, a quantitative model for UT thickness measurement deviation is proposed for plant conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.657-665
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• 2021

Nondestructive evaluation methods play an important role in ensuring component integrity and safety in many industries. Operator fatigue can play a critical role in the reliability of such methods. This is important for inspecting high value assets or assets with a high consequence of failure, such as aerospace and nuclear components. Recent advances in convolution neural networks can support and automate these inspection efforts. This paper proposes using residual neural networks (ResNets) for real-time detection of corrosion, including iron oxide discoloration, pitting and stress corrosion cracking, in dry storage stainless steel canisters housing used nuclear fuel. The proposed approach crops nuclear canister images into smaller tiles, trains a ResNet on these tiles, and classifies images as corroded or intact using the per-image count of tiles predicted as corroded by the ResNet. The results demonstrate that such a deep learning approach allows to detect the locus of corrosion via smaller tiles, and at the same time to infer with high accuracy whether an image comes from a corroded canister. Thereby, the proposed approach holds promise to automate and speed up nuclear fuel canister inspections, to minimize inspection costs, and to partially replace human-conducted onsite inspections, thus reducing radiation doses to personnel.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.9
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• pp.2092-2099
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• 2020

Many damages due to flow-accelerated corrosion and cracking have been observed during recent in-service inspections of nuclear power plants. To determine the operability or repair for damaged pipes, an integrity evaluation related to the damaged piping system should be performed by using already proven code and standards. One of them, the ASME Code Case is most popularly used to integrity assessment in nuclear power plants. However, the recent version of CC N-513 still recommends the simplified method which means a damaged elbow is assumed as an equivalent straight pipe. In addition, to enhance the accuracy integrity assessment in elbow, several previous studies recommend that the SIF and elastic COD values for an elbow with relatively large crack could be predicted by an interpolation technique. However, those estimates for elbow with relatively large crack might be derived to inaccurate results for crack growth analysis, such as for the allowable crack size and life estimation. Therefore, in this paper, the effect of crack length (0.3≤θ₁/π≤0.5) on SIF and elastic COD for elbow is systematically investigated. Then, for large crack in elbow, accurate estimates for SIF and elastic COD, which are widely used to assess the integrity of elbows, are proposed. Those proposed solutions are expected to be the technical basis for revisions of CC N-513-4 through the validation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.30 no.12 s.255
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• pp.1618-1625
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• 2006

During the last two decades, several guidelines have been developed and used for assessing the integrity of a defective steam generator (SG) tube that is generally caused by stress corrosion cracking or wall-thinning phenomenon. However, as some of SG tubes are also failed due to fretting and so on, alternative failure estimation schemes are required for relevant defects. In this paper, parametric three-dimensional finite element (FE) analyses are carried out under internal pressure condition to simulate the failure behavior of SG tubes with different defect configurations; elliptical wear, tapered and flat wear type defects. Maximum pressures based on material strengths are obtained from more than a hundred FE results to predict the failure of SG tube. After investigating the effect of key parameters such as defect depth, defect length and wrap angle, simplified failure estimation equations are proposed in relation to the equivalent stress at the deepest point in wear region. Comparison of failure pressures predicted by the proposed estimation scheme with corresponding burst test data showed a good agreement.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.7
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• pp.607-614
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• 2008

Since pipes with wall-thinning defects can collapse at fluid pressure that are lower than expected, the collapse moment of wall-thinned pipes should be determined accurately for the safety of nuclear power plants. Wall-thinning defects, which are mostly found in pipe bends and elbows, are mainly caused by flow-accelerated corrosion. This lowers the failure pressure, load-carrying capacity, deformation ability, and fatigue resistance of pipe bends and elbows. This paper offers a support vector regression (SVR) model further enhanced with a fuzzy algorithm for calculation of the collapse moment and for evaluating the integrity of wall-thinned piping systems. The fuzzy support vector regression (FSVR) model is applied to numerical data obtained from finite element analyses of piping systems with wall-thinning defects. In this paper, three FSVR models are developed, respectively, for three data sets divided into extrados, intrados, and crown defects corresponding to three different defect locations. It is known that FSVR models are sufficiently accurate for an integrity evaluation of piping systems from laser or ultrasonic measurements of wall-thinning defects.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.31-39
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• 2015

Pipe wall-thinning by flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) and various types of erosion is a significant and costly damage phenomenon in secondary piping systems of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Most NPPs have management programs to ensure pipe integrity due to wall-thinning that includes periodic measurements for pipe wall thicknesses using ultrasonic tests (UTs). Nevertheless, thinning evaluations are not easy because the amount of thickness reduction being measured is often quite small compared to the accuracy of the inspection technique. U.S. Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) had proposed Total Point Method (TPM) as a thinning occurrence evaluation method, which is a very useful method for detecting locally thinned pipes or fittings. However, evaluation engineers have to discern manually the measurement data because there are no numerical algorithm for TPM. In this study, numerical algorithms were developed based on non-parametric and parametric statistical method.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.173-178
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• 2012

To manage the wall thinning of carbon steel piping in nuclear power plants, the utility of Korea has performed thickness inspection for some quantity of pipe components during refueling outages and determined whether repair or replacement after evaluating UT (Ultrasonic Test) data. When the existing UT data evaluation methods, such as Band, Blanket, PTP (Point to Point) Methods, are applied to a certain pipe component, unnecessary re-inspecting situations may be generated even though the component does not thinned. In those cases, economical loss caused by repeated inspection and problems of maintaining the pipe integrity followed by decreasing of newly inspected components may be generated. EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) in USA has suggested several statistical methods, TPM (Total Point Method), LSS (Least Square Slope) Method, etc. to distinguish whether multiple inspecting components have thinned or not. This paper presents the analysis results for multiple inspecting components over three times based on both NAM (Near Area of Minimum) Method developed by KEPCO-E&C and the other methods suggested by EPRI.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.64-70
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• 2019

In recent years, attention has been paid to the integrity of steam generator (SG) tubes due to severe accident and beyond design basis accident conditions. In these transient conditions, steam generator tubes may be damaged by high temperature and pressure, which might result in a risk of fission products being released to the environment due to the failure. Alloy 690 which has increased the Cr content has been replaced for the SG tube due to its high corrosion resistance against stress corrosion cracking (SCC). However, there is lack of research on the high temperature creep rupture and life prediction model of Alloy 690. In this study, creep test was performed to estimate the high temperature creep rupture life of Alloy 690 using tube specimens. Based on manufacturer's creep data and creep test results performed in this study, creep life prediction was carried out using the Larson-Miller (LM) Parameter, Orr-Sherby-Dorn (OSD) parameter, Manson-Haford (MH) parameter, and Wilshire's approach. And a hyperbolic sine (sinh) function to determine master curves in LM, OSD and MH parameter methods was used for improving the creep life estimation of Alloy 690 material.

• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.320-325
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• 2004

Fracture behaviors and strength of pipes with local wall thinning are very important Jar the integrity of energy plants. In pipes of energy plants, sometimes, the local wall thinning may result from severe erosion-corrosion damage. Recently, the effects of local wall thinning on strength and fracture behaviors of piping system have been well studied. In this paper, the elasto-plastic analysis is performed by FE code ANSIS. We evaluated the failure mode, fracture strength and fracture behavior from FE analysis.