• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.10
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• pp.1249-1254
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• 2012

Pipe inspections conducted in nuclear power plants play an important role in ensuring the structural integrity of pipes. Because considerable manpower and expense is required for pipe inspections, it is very important to determine the optimum inspection period and the level of inspection. In this study, the effects of the period and the inspection quality on the failure probability of pipes are investigated using the P-PIE program, which has been developed to calculate the failure probability of pipes. The pipe data of an internal nuclear power plant is used in the study, and fatigue and stress corrosion crack growth are considered in the analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.256-263
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• 2009

After several PWSCCs were found in Bugey(France), Ringhals(Sweden), Tihange(Belgium), Oconee, Arkansas, Crystal Fever, Davis-Basse, VC Summer(U.S.A.), Thuruga(Japan), USNRC and PNNL started the research on PWSCC, that is, the PINC project. USNRC required KINS to participate in the PINC project in May 2005. KINS organized the Korean consortium at March 2006 and Pre-RRT for RVHP were performed for the preparation of PINC RRT. Through these preliminary RRT, Korea NDE teams can learn and develop the detection and sizing technique for RVHP dissimilar metal weld. These techniques are now being prepared in Korea and need to be utilized for the In-service inspection of the RVHP and BMI of Korea Nuclear Power Plants. PINC RRT mock-ups will be helpful to training.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.380-385
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• 2010

The integrity of components and piping of operating nuclear power plants has been identified by in-service inspection(ISI) requirements and activities commensurate with standards and codes such as KEPIC MI or ASME Code Section XI. However, the other various degradation mechanisms not considered during design stage of nuclear power plants have been checked by enhanced ISI. The requirements of enhanced ISI have been voluntarily developed by the industry itself or strickly issued by regulatory body. Even though the requirements were developed by the industry, they should be reviewed by regulatory body for their application in nuclear power plants. The enhanced ISI activities and requirements of non-destructive examination(NDE) which reflect the degradation issues in nuclear power industry will be primarily discussed in this paper.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.265-276
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• 2013

Pressure tubes made of Zr-2.5 wt% Nb alloy are important components consisting reactor coolant pressure boundary of a pressurized heavy water reactor, in which unanticipated through-wall cracks and rupture may occur due to a delayed hydride cracking (DHC). The Canadian Standards Association has provided deterministic and probabilistic structural integrity evaluation procedures to protect pressure tubes against DHC. However, intuitive understanding and subsequent assessment of flaw behaviors are still insufficient due to complex degradation mechanisms and diverse influential parameters of DHC compared with those of stress corrosion cracking and fatigue crack growth phenomena. In the present study, a deterministic flaw assessment program was developed and applied for systematic integrity assessment of the pressure tubes. Based on the examination results dealing with effects of flaw shapes, pressure tube dimensional changes, hydrogen concentrations of pressure tubes and plant operation scenarios, a simple and rough method for effective cooldown operation was proposed to minimize DHC risks. The developed deterministic assessment program for pressure tubes can be used to derive further technical bases for probabilistic damage frequency assessment.

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.200-210
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• 2006

This C-ring test, normally employed for evaluating susceptibility to stress-corrosion cracking, was determined to be a suitable small scale test to evaluate PWHT(Post-Weld Heat Treatment) cracking susceptibility. This test is possible to incorporate an actual weld, to introduce a notch into the coarse grained HAZ(Heat Affected Zone), to load the coarse grained HAZ any level of stress ad, most importantly, since the C-ring is an approximately constant strain type test, the stress decreases with time at temperature in a manner similar to that of an actual steel weldment. The procedure employed in making the C-ring was presented in the experimental procedure section, however, several points deserve further discussion. The walls of the weld groove are made along radial lines form the center of th var in order to obtain an HAZ which is oriented perpendicular to the walls of the machined C-ring. Therefore, the plane of maximum stress will be aligned through the HAZ and, therefore, crack propagation will not be forced to deviate form the plane of maximum stress in order to remain in the coarse grained HAZ as is the case with the Y groove test.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.162-169
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• 2012

This study detected SCC defects of dissimilar metal welded(STS304 and SA106 Gr. b) pipes using the ultrasonic infrared thermography method and the lock-in image treatment method among infrared thermography method. The infrared excitement equipment has 250 Watt of output and 20 kHz of frequency. By using the ultrasound infrared thermography method, the internal defects of dissimilar metal weld joints of pipes used at nuclear power plants could get detected. By an actual PT test, it was observed that the cracks inside the pipe existed not as a single crack but rather as a multiple cracks within a certain area and generated a hot spot image of a broad area on the thermography image. In addition, UT technology could not easily defects detected by the width of $10\;{\mu}m$ fine hair cracks. but, ultrasound infrared thermography technique was defect detected.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.319-325
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• 2017

Through silicon via (TSV) technology is extensively used in 3D IC integrations. The special structure of the TSV is realized by CMP (Chemically Mechanical Polishing) process with a high Cu removal rate and, low dishing, yielding fine topography without defects. In this study, we investigated the electrochemical behavior of copper slurries with various inhibitors in the Cu CMP process for advanced TSV applications. One of the slurries was carried out for the most promising process with a high removal rate (${\sim}18000{\AA}/Min$ @ 3 psi) and low dishing (${\sim}800{\AA}$), providing good microstructure. The effects of pH value and $H_2O_2$ concentration on the slurry corrosion potential and Cu static etching rate (SER) were also examined. The slurry formula with a pH of 6 and 2% $H_2O_2$, hadthe lowest SER (${\sim}75{\AA}/Min$) and was the best for TSV CMP. A novel Cu TSV CMP process was developed with two CMPs and an additional annealing step after some of the bulk Cu had been removed, effectively improving the condition of the TSV Cu surface and preventing the formation of crack defects by variations in wafer stress during TSV process integration.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.12-21
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• 1995

The study was performed to study the effects of strain rate on acoustics emission( AE) during bulging test in corrosive environmentsynthetic sea water. The strain rates used were in the range $4 \times 10^{-6}S^{-1}$ to $1 \times 10^{-4} \times S^{-1}$ and the parameters used to evaluate AE signal characteristics were AE hit and amplitude. It can be observed that the cumulative AE hit and average amplitude during fracture process increase highly at decreasing strain rates while the equivalent fracture strain and the crack length of circumferencial direction become decrease. The peak point of AE signal characteristic parameters approach to the first half of test. When the average amplitude per unit equivalent fracture strain was above 20dB, it was definitly observed stress corrosion cracking phenomena. Additional, we knew that the AE test had the possibility to evaluate SCC susceptibility with various strain rates.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.13-16
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• 2008

Corbels are short cantilevers that project from the faces of a column and are a type of stress disturbed member, resisting both the ultimate shear force applied to them by the beam, and the ultimate horizontal force caused by shrinkage, temperature changes, and creep of the supported elements. Recently, as there have been an increase in the use of high-strength concrete and the concern about corrosion problems, lots of researches about hybrid reinforcing technique, applying strategically high performance reinforcements to the concrete elements, are performed. In this study, fiber reinforced high strength concrete corbels were constructed and tested for applying hybrid reinforcing technique to the corbels using steel fibers and headed bars. The results showed that the performance in terms of load carrying capacities, stiffness, ductility, and crack width was improved, as the steel fibers were added and the percentage of steel fibers was increased. In addition, the corbel specimens used headed bars as main tension ties showed superior load carrying capacities, stiffness, and ductility to the corbel specimens anchored main tension ties by welding to the transverse bars.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.45-52
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• 2003

A number of stress corrosion cracks in turbine rotor disk keyway in power plants have been found and the necessity has been raised to detect and evaluate the cracks prior to the catastrophic failure of turbine disk. By ultrasonic RF signal analysis and using a neural network based on bark-propagation algorithm, we tried to evaluate the location, size and orientation of cracks around keyway. Because RF signals received from each reflector have a number of peaks, they were processed to have a single peak for each reflector. Using the processed RF signals, scan data that contain the information on the position of transducer and the arrival time of reflected waves from each reflector were obtained. The time difference between each reflector and the position of transducer extracted from the scan data were then applied to the back-propagation neural network. As a result, the neural network was found useful to evaluate the location, size and orientation of cracks initiated from keyway.