Abstract
The failure mode of a pipe due to local wall thinning is increasingly more attention in the nuclear power plant industry. To assess the integrity of locally wall thinned pipe, it is necessary to perform many simulations under various conditions. Because the modeling for locally wall thinned elbow is more complicated than that of straight pipe the efficient modeling method for finite element analysis is necessary. In this study, the more simple efficient modeling method of three-dimensional finite element analysis for locally wall thinned elbow has been suggested and verified. And using the method, the failure mode of local wall thinned elbows that have different thinning lengths and circumferential angles is evaluated. From the results, we concluded that the collapse load of elbows has been decreased by the increase of wall thinning shape factors such as thinning lengths and circumferential angles.
