• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.568-575
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• 2010

Flow Accelerated Corrosion is an active degradation mechanism of CANDU feeder. The tight bend downstream to Gray loc weld connection, close to reactor face, suffers significant wall thinning by FAC. Extensive in-service inspection of feeder wall thinning is very difficult because of the intense radiation field, complex geometry, and space restrictions. Development of a knowledge-based inspection program is important in order to guarantee that adequate wall thickness is maintained throughout the whole life of feeder. Research results and plant experiences are reviewed, and the plant inspection databases from Wolsong Units One to Four are analyzed in order to support developing such a knowledge-based inspection program. The initial thickness before wall thinning is highly non-uniform because of bending during manufacturing stage, and the thinning rate is non-uniform because of the mass transfer coefficient distributed non-uniformly depending on local hydraulics. It is obvious that the knowledge-based feeder inspection program should focus on both fastest thinning locations and thinnest locations. The feeder wall thinning rate is found to be correlated proportionately with QV of each channel. A statistical model is proposed to assess the remaining life of each feeder using the QV correlation and the measured thicknesses. W-1 feeder suffered significant thinning so that the shortest remaining life barely exceeded one year at the end of operation before replacement. W-2 feeder showed far slower thinning than W-1 feeder despite the faster coolant flow. It is believed that slower thinning in W-2 is because of higher chromium content in the carbon steel feeder material. The average Cr content of W-2 feeder is 0.051%, while that value is 0.02% for W-1 feeder. It is to be noted that FAC is reduced substantially even though the Cr content of W-2 feeder is still very low.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.79-86
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• 1995

The structural materials for cryogenic technology have been recently developed to support the many modern large-scale application from superconducting magnets for nuclear fusion reactor, magnetic levitation railway to LNG tankers. However it is pointed out that quenching phenomenon is one of the serious problems for the integrity of these applications, which is mainly attributed to the rapid temperature rising in the material due to some extrinsic factors of structures. From the viewpoint of fracture mechanics, it is therefore very important to clarify the mechanism of temperature rising of structural material due to cyclic loading at cryogenic temperature. From this purpose, fatigue test was carried out for high manganese steel at liquid helium temperature(4.2K) using triangular stress waveform to identify both the mechanism of temperature rising near crack tip and the effect of loading stress waveform on temperature rising near crack tip and the effect of loading stress waveforms on temperature rising. As the results, two types of temperature rising, that is, regular and burst types were observed. And a periodical temperature rising corresponding to the stress waveforms was also found. The peaks of the temperature rising were recorded near both the maximum and the minimum values of the applied stress. The sudden temperature rises, which indicated the higher values than those of periodical temperature rises under the repetition of stress, were observed at the final region of crack growth. It was shown that the peak values of the temperature rising increased with stress intensity factor range.