• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제32권5호
• /
• pp.465-476
• /
• 2000

In a nuclear power plant, steam generator tubes cover a major portion of the primary pressure-retaining boundary. Thus very conservative approaches have been taken in the light of steam generator tube integrity According to the present criteria, tubes wall-thinned in excess of 40% should be plugged whatever causes are. However, many analytical and experimental results have shown that no safety problems exist even with thickness reductions greater than 40%. The present criterion was developed about twenty years ago when wear and pitting were dominant causes for steam generator tube degradation. And it is based on tubes with single cracks regardless of the fact that the appearance of multiple cracks is more common in general. The objective of this study is to review the conservatism of the present plugging criteria of steam generator tubes and to propose a new coalescence model for two adjacent through-wall cracks existing in steam generator tubes. Using the existing failure models and experimental results, we reviewed the conservatism of the present plugging criteria. In order to verify the usefulness of the proposed new coalescence model, we performed finite element analysis and some parametric studies. Then, we developed a coalescence evaluation diagram.

• 한국해양공학회지
• /
• 제19권5호
• /
• pp.65-70
• /
• 2005

Fracture behavior and pipe strength are very important to the integrity of energy plants, ocean structures, and so forth. The pipes of energy plants and ocean structures are subject to local wall thinning, resulting from severe erosion-corrosion damage. Recently, the effects of local wall thinning on fracture strength and fracture behavior of piping systems have been the focus of many studies. In this paper, the elasto-plastic analysis is performed by FE code ANSYS on straight pipes with wall thinning. We evaluated the failure mode, fracture strength and fracture behavior, using FE analysis. Also, the effect of the axial strain on deformations and failure modes was estimated by FE analysis.