Development of a Thermal Fatigue Screening and Evaluation Methodology for Pressurized Water Reactor Plants

Thermal cycling has been identified as a mechanism that can potentially lead to fatigue cracking in un-isolable branch lines attached to pressurized water reactor (PWR) primary coolant piping. A significant research and development program has been undertaken to understand the mechanisms causing thermal cycling and to develop models for predicting the thermal-hydraulic boundary conditions for use in piping structural and fatigue analysis. A combination of first-principles engineering modeling and scaled experimental investigations has been used to formulate improved thermal cycling modeling tools. This paper will provide an overview of the model development program, a summary of the supporting test program, and a description of the thermal cycling model structure. Benchmarking of the thermal cycling model against several PWR plant configurations is presented, demonstrating favorable comparison with cases where thermal stratification and cycling has been previously observed.

Sophisticated Creep-Fatigue Life Estimation Scheme for Pressure Vessel Components Based on Stress Redistribution Locus Concept

High temperature components are operated under cyclic thermal transient. Creep-Fatigue is the most dominant failure mode to be considered in Elevated Temperature Design of these components. Design limit for computed thermal stress is allowed to exceed yielding, because thermal stress is generally regarded as a displacement controlled one. Since creep deformation is considered as additional inelastic behavior, methodology to estimate inelastic strain concentration should be prepared in a design standard. Though inelastic FEM analyses can be applied to calculate inelastic strain concentration magnitude, it is well known that prediction is affected by applied constitutive model. Current design codes recommend to apply elastic FEM and to estimate inelastic strain behavior by simplified method. This paper presents sophisticated technique to estimate inelastic strain behavior based on Stress Redistribution Locus (SRL) method. Applicability of SRL concept is discussed with a help of FEM results for representative components of pressure vessel components such as nozzle, skirt and tube sheet.

Development of the Guideline on Inelastic Analysis for Design

The guideline on inelastic analysis for design, one of the key items of Fast Reactor Design Standard (FDS), is being developed. The basic policies of this guideline are as follows: (a) to emphasis conservative analysis output rather than nominal value representing actual behavior, (b) to clarify the applicable area for assurance of conservative results. With such concepts, it would be possible that the guideline provides useful explanations on the manner of analysis and estimation in the form of concrete examples of design as well as general rules (somehow vague). As the first step of the guideline development, the following five issues to be solved were extracted: 1) applicable area, 2) selection of constitutive equation, 3) modeling method of the load history, 4) ratchet strain and creep fatigue damage evaluation methods by inelastic analysis and 5) example design problems to check users’ analysis quality and to complement the general rules. In parallel, inelastic analyses with the promising constitutive equations were applied by way of trial to obtain rough presumption on their effects on structural design of the components. As a result, all inelastic analyses provided smaller cumulative strains and equivalent strain ranges than the existing design method based on elastic analysis, suggesting advantage of introducing them into actual design.

Design and Fabrication of Reactor Pressure Vessel for High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR)

The reactor pressure vessel (RPV) of the HTTR is 5.5 m in inside diameter, 13.2 m in inside height, and 122 mm and 160 mm in wall thickness of the body and the top head dome, respectively. Because the reactor inlet temperature of the HTTR is higher than that of LWRs, 2 1/4Cr-1Mo steel is chosen for the RPV material. Fluence of the RPV is estimated to be less than 1×1017 n/cm2 (E>1 MeV), and so irradiation embrittlement is presumed to be negligible, but temper embrittlement is not. For the purpose of reducing embrittlement, content of some elements is limited on 2 1/4 Cr-1 Mo steel for the RPV using embrittlement parameters, J-factor and X. In this paper design, fabrication procedure, and in-service inspection technique of the RPV for the HTTR are described.

Spectra Thermal Fatigue Tests Under Frequency Controlled Fluid Temperature Variation: Development of Test Equipment and Preliminary Tests

High cycle thermal fatigue induced by fluid temperature fluctuation is one of the important issues in nuclear plants. JNC has proposed a fatigue evaluation method paying attention to temperature attenuation related with frequency of fluctuation. In order to clarify the frequency effect of fluid temperature fluctuation on the crack initiation and propagation, a sodium temperature controlled thermal fatigue test equipment (SPECTRA) was developed. This equipment is capable of preciously controlling sodium temperature variation under various frequencies with a constant flow rate. This performance was achieved by the control of electromagnetic pumps without mechanical valve operations. Specimens are long straight pipes where temperature fluctuation ranges gradually reduce from upstream to downstream. As preliminary tests, temperature measurement and fatigue experiments were conducted. Measured temperature was preciously controlled under various frequencies. Cracks were observed in upstream area of a specimen. From above results, capability of frequency controlled test by SPECTRA facility was confirmed.

Simplified Elasto-Plastic Response Analysis Method of Piping

When piping systems are subjected to extreme seismic excitation, they undergo a plastic deformation that produces a large damping effect via energy dissipation. Based on our studies of the damping effect of the elasto-plastic response of piping, we have presented a simplified method for predicting the elasto-plastic response of piping in PVP conferences over the last several years. Yet the elasto-plastic response of piping calculated by this method resulted in conservative predictions compared with the results of piping model excitation tests. In the proposed method, we calculate the vibration energy of piping and the dissipation energy with plastic deformation by FEM analysis and obtain the equivalent damping ratio as a ratio between the two. The equivalent damping ratio and response are interdependent and can be calculated as a pair of converged values. In this paper we report simulation results from 3D piping model excitation tests as well as the results from 2D piping model tests. The simulation method is a modified and improved version of the method reported earlier. The results obtained by the revised method more closely matched the results of the excitation tests.

Experimental Investigation Into the Fracture Toughness of Polyethylene Pipe Material

The mechanical behavior of the recently produced gas pipes material PE100 is investigated and compared to the commonly used material PE80 to determine their relative advantages. The two materials show plastic behavior at room temperature. The fracture toughness of the two materials is experimentally determined using the two common elastic plastic fracture mechanics methods: the ASTM multiple specimen test method for determining the J-R curve of the materials, and the crack opening displacement (COD) method. The investigation of the fracture behavior of the two materials includes the effect of the specimen thickness as well as specimen configuration. The experimental tests were carried on the compact tension (CT) specimens and the single edge notch bending (SENB) specimens. At −70°C, the materials show elastic behavior, the ASTM test method for determining fracture toughness is applied to SENB specimens to determine KIC of both materials. PE80 shows greater resistance to fracture than PE100.

Fatigue Crack Modeling and Simulation Based on Continuum Damage Mechanics

Numerical simulation of fatigue crack propagation based on fracture mechanics and conventional finite element method requires huge amount of computational resources when cracked structure is subjected to complicated condition such as the cases of multiple site damage or thermal fatigue. The objective of the present study is to resolve this difficulty by employing the continuum damage mechanics (CDM). An anisotropic damage variable is defined to model a macroscopic fatigue crack and its validity is examined by comparing the stress distributions around the crack with those obtained by an ordinary fracture mechanics method. Together with the assumptions on crack opening/closing and damage evolution, numerical simulations are conducted for low cycle fatigue crack propagation behaviors in a plate with single and two cracks. The results show good agreement with the experiments. Finally, propagations of multiply distributed cracks under low cycle fatigue loading are simulated to demonstrate the potential applicability of the present method.

Influence of Crack Orientation and Crosshead Speed on the Fracture Toughness of PVC Pipe Materials

In many modern engineering application designers and manufactures of Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes are interested in the evaluation of fracture toughness under several operation conditions. The aim of the present work is to investigate the fracture toughness of commercial amorphous thermoplastic PVC materials used in pipes applications. The experimental work is carried out using three different specimens types: Taper Double Cantilever Beam (TDCB), Three Point Bend (TPB), and Compact Tension (CT). Tests are conducted on specimens with thickness (17,20,22, and 26 mm), longitudinal and transverse extrusion orientations, at different crosshead speeds (50–500 mm/min) to calculate the fracture toughness of PVC pipe materials. The experimental work has revealed that the crosshead speed has a significant effect on the fracture toughness at low speed rates. This effect, however, becomes insignificant at high rates since, the fracture behavior becomes brittle. The stress intensity factor KQ is approximately the same in both longitudinal and transverse orientations. The fracture toughness decreases as the specimen thickness increases.

Validity of High-Temperature Strength Standards for Heat Resistant Steels

The ASME allowable stress is evaluated for 2.25Cr-1Mo, Mod.9Cr-1Mo and type 304 (18Cr-8Ni) steels. The change in coefficient for tensile strength for the allowable stress from 1/4 to 1/3.5 causes a shift of boundary temperature between the tensile and creep regions to lower temperature only by 20–30°C, although it increases the allowable stress by 15% in the tensile region for 2.25Cr-1Mo steel. Whether the allowable stress is determined by 80% of the minimum stress or 67% of the average stress to cause rupture at the end of 105 h depends on the width of scatter band of creep rupture. Type 304 steel exhibits large heat-to-heat variation in time to rupture at long times and the 105 h creep rupture stress distinctly depends on impurity contents such as Al. The stress to produce a creep rate of 0.01% /1000h is about 50 MPa lower than the stress to produce a minimum creep rate of 0.01%/1000h, corresponding to 10−5%/h, for 1Cr-0.5Mo steel. This results from the strain accumulation due to easy deformation in the transient or primary creep.