The present paper deals with the deformation and failure mechanisms of austenitic piping under the influence of oxyhydrogen reactions for the safety evaluation of incident scenarios in technical installations based on previous work of the author [1–5].
For the characterization of the processes, detonation tests performed at the Materials Testing Institute University of Stuttgart (MPA Stuttgart) have been used. The aim of these experiments was to study the detonation processes in head spray cooling piping of boiling water reactors. The experiments were performed on austenitic pipes with an outer diameter of O. D. = 114.3 mm and various wall thicknesses. Oxyhydrogen was used in its stoichiometric ratio of 2H2+O2 mixed with various amounts of an inert gas component. These tests have shown that less amounts of reactive gas may result in a stronger reaction of the pipe structure. This observation is attributed to the influence of the so-called overdriven detonation.
Depending on the ratio of oxyhydrogen to the inert gas component and the pipe-wall thickness, adiabatic shear bands can occur in the piping structure. Adiabatic shear bands are very narrow zones with intense localized shear deformations due to the conversion of a significant portion of strain energy into heat.
In order to describe this phenomenon numerically, a strain-based failure model was used which can reflect material damage over a wide range of different stress states. However, it has shown that damage of the studied material depends significantly on the Lode angle. Furthermore, no clear dependence of the failure limit on the loading rate has been found for the studied material.
For the constitutive description of the material behavior under the occurring loading rates and temperatures suitable material models were selected and the required parameters have been evaluated experimentally and verified by numerical methods. With the aid of this constitutive description of the material behavior and the failure model numerical simulations of the detonation tests were carried out.
Deformation and Failure Mechanisms in Ceramic-Reinforced Metal-Matrix Composites at Atomic Scales
