• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
• /
• 1998.10a
• /
• pp.288-291
• /
• 1998

Inconel 600 alloy is used as the material of nuclear steam generator tubing because of its mechanical properties, formability, and corrosion properties. According to reports, the life time of nuclear power plants decreases because of the pitting, intergranular attack, primary water stress corrosion cracking(PWSCC), and intergranular stress corrosion cracking(IGSCC), and denting in the steam generator. The SCC test is very important because of SCC appears in various environment such as solutions, materials, and stress. The C-Rig specimen was made of the steam generator welded sleeve repairing by the pulsed Nd:YAG laser. In the corrosion invironment, corrosion solutions are Primary Water, Caustic, and Sulfate solution and corrosion time is 1624-4877hr. The permitted stress is 30-60ksi.In this C-Ring SCC test is the relationship between corrosion depth, crack and corrosion environment is evaluated. SCC was happens in Sulfate and Corrosion solution but doesn't happen in Primary Water. The corrosion time and stress is very affected by the severely environment of Sulfate or Caustic solution. The microstructure observation indicates that SCC causes interganular failure in the grain boundary of vertical direction.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.41 no.6
• /
• pp.841-848
• /
• 2009

A simple model to analyze non-linear density-wave instability in a sodium-cooled helically coiled steam generator is developed. The model is formulated with three regions with moving boundaries. The homogeneous equilibrium flow model is used for the two-phase region and the shell-side energy conservation is also considered for the heat flux variation in each region. The proposed model is applied to the analysis of two-phase instability in a JAEA (Japan Atomic Energy Agency) 50MWt No.2 steam generator. The steady state results show that the proposed model accurately predicts the six cases of operating temperatures on the primary and secondary sides. The sizes of three regions, the secondary side pressure drop according to the flow rate, and the temperature variation in the vertical direction are also predicted well. The temporal variations of the inlet flow rate according to the throttling coefficient, the boiling and superheating boundaries and the pressure drop in the two-phase and superheating regions are obtained from the unsteady analysis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 1999.10a
• /
• pp.355.2-355
• /
• 1999

The spnng back phenomena occurring in the coiling process of a steam generator tube induces the dimensional inaccuracy and makes the coiling procedure difficult. In this research, an analytical model was developed to evaluate the amount of the spring back for SMART steam generator tubes. The model was developed on the basis of beam theory and elastic-perfectly plastic material property. This model was extended to consider the effect of plastic hardening and the effect of the tensile force on the spring back phenomena. Parametric studies were performed for various design variables of steam generator tubes in order to minimize the spring back in the design stage. A sensitivity analysis has shown that the low yield strength, the high elastic modulus, the small helix diameter, and the large tube diameter result in a small amount of the spring back. The amount of the spring back can be controlled by the selection of adequate design values in the basic design stage and reduced to an allowable limit by the application of the tensile force to the tube during the coiling process.rocess.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 1996.07a
• /
• pp.83-85
• /
• 1996

Major cause of defects in steam generator tubes at nuclear power plant is the accumulation of magnetite and other byproducts of corrosion in the crevice gap between support plates and tubes. Since damaged tubes result in contamination of the secondary coolant by the radioactive primary coolant, they represent a safety hazard. Early detection of magnetite buildup is, therefore, imperative in order to take remedial measures such as chemical flushing. Although the eddy current testing is being used for the inspection of steam generator tubes, the interpretation of resulting signals is generally a difficult task. This paper uses the phase of sensor coil emf as the test signal to find a way of easier signal interpretation. Numerical study using FEM shows that the shape of resulting signal is good for identifying the relative position of the probe to the support plate, and for discreminating the different shapes and degrees of magnetite buildup in the crevice gap region.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.28 no.3
• /
• pp.263-272
• /
• 2008

Many technical methods are used for nondestructive testing field for solid materials. Among those, ultrasonic inspection methods are widely used and one of the popular methods involves the extraction of an appropriate set of features followed by the use of a neural network for the classification of the signals in the feature space. This paper describes an approach which uses LMS method to determine the coordinates of the ultrasonic probe followed by the use of SAFT with centroid technique to estimate the location of the ultrasonic reflector. The method is employed for classifying UT-NDE signals from the steam generator tubes in a nuclear power plant. The classification results are presented for the ultrasonic signals from cracks and deposits within steam generator tubes.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.56 no.7
• /
• pp.1224-1230
• /
• 2007

In this paper, we study the classification of defects at steam generator tube in nuclear power plant using eddy current testing (ECT). We consider 4 defect patterns of SG tube: I-In type, I-Out type, V-In type, and V-Out type. Through numerical analysis program based on finite element modeling, 400 ECT signals are generated by varying width and depth of each defect type. In order to improve the classification performance, we propose new feature extraction technique. After extracting new features from the generated ECT signals, multi-layer perceptron is used to classify the defect patterns. Through the computer simulation study, it is shown that the proposed method achieves 100% classification success rate while the previous method yields 91% success rate.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.41 no.8
• /
• pp.1115-1126
• /
• 2009

As one of the ways to enhance the economical features in sodium-cooled fast reactor development, the concept of an integrated steam generator and pump system (ISGPS) is proposed from a structural point of view. And the related intermediate heat transfer system (IHTS) piping layout compatible with the ISGPS is described in detail. To assure the creep design lifetime of 60 years, the structural integrity is investigated through high temperature structural evaluation procedures by the SIE ASME-NH computer code, which implements the ASME-NH design rules. From the results of this study, it is found that the proposed ISGPS concept is feasible and applicable to a commercial SFR design.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.58 no.12
• /
• pp.2532-2537
• /
• 2009

For defect characterization in steam generator tubes in nuclear power plant, artificial neural network has been extensively used to classify defect types. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of Bagging for improving the performance of neural network for the classification of tube defects. Bagging is a method that combines outputs of many neural networks that were trained separately with different training data set. By varying the number of neurons in the hidden layer, we carry out computer simulations in order to compare the classification performance of bagging neural network and single neural network. From the experiments, we found that the performance of bagging neural network is superior to the average performance of single neural network in most cases.

• Journal of Magnetics
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.88-91
• /
• 2011

Steam generator tubes (SGTs) in nuclear power plants (NPPs) are a boundary between the primary side generating heat by nuclear fission and the secondary side generating electric power by a turbine. The water inside the SGT is high temperature and high pressure. Therefore, defects and magnetic phases (MPs) are partly produced in non-magnetic SGT by high stresses and temperatures. This causes trouble regarding the safety of SGTs but it is difficult to detect the MP using the conventional eddy current technique (ECT). In particular, a circumferential defect (CD) and circumferential magnetic phase (CMP) cannot detected by ECT. Consequently, a new method is needed to detect CDs and CMPs in SGT. A new U-type yoke with two types of coils was designed and the reactance signal by the CMPs and CDs in the SGT material was simulated.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 2003.07b
• /
• pp.702-704
• /
• 2003

In this paper, analysis of bobbin probe signal in steam generator tube with bulge defect on CE system 80 nuclear power plant is represented. The CE system 80 steam generator is adopted in ULJIN-4 nuclear power plant. From Maxwell's equation, the electromagnetic governing equation for eddy current problem is derived and by performing the finite element formulation the 3-dimensional finite element code with brick element is developed. For the ease of the comparison the numerical results with experimental ones, the calculated signals are adjusted by using the ASME standard 100[%] through hole signal. For analysis of the effect of variation of the bulge depth on the impedance signal 0.2[mm] and 0.4[mm] depth of bulge defect signals are calculated and analyzed. As the depth of the bulge defect is increased, the magnitude of the signal is increased, too. But the rate of the increment of the signal is less than that of the depth of defect. From the result of this paper, we can obtained the information of the effect of bulge defect on the impedance signal.