Development of Instrument for Residual Stress Measurement in a 50 mm Inner Diameter Power Generation Pipes

With recent issues related to stress corrosion cracking (SCC) and thermal fatigue of power plant components, including nuclear steam generator tubing, condenser tubing, boiler tubes steam turbine blades, the residual stress in materials plays an important role in determining those susceptible for failure caused by fatigue or SCC. These residual stresses, combined with the applied stresses inherited from manufacturing and assembly can be tensile or compressive. The SCC can act in a corrosive environment only when the stresses in the material are tensile, thus leading to cracking of the component and the structure. Thermal fatigue can be originated from thermal gradients caused during the operation of power plants. Proto Manufacturing Limited, leader in the residual stress measurement and equipment development tailored for these applications has developed instruments capable of measuring residuals tresses in confined areas such as inner diameter of tubes as small as 50 mm in diameter, non-destructively in the direction of interest, axial direction. In this paper interesting examples of new x-ray diffraction instrument and measurement validation are presented along with application inside a 50 mm I.D.