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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.net.2014.11.008

ESTIMATION OF LEAK RATE THROUGH CIRCUMFERENTIAL CRACKS IN PIPES IN NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS  

PARK, JAI HAK (Department of Safety Engineering, Chungbuk National University)
CHO, YOUNG KI (Department of Safety Engineering, Chungbuk National University)
KIM, SUN HYE (Mechanical and Material Assessment Department, Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety)
LEE, JIN HO (Mechanical and Material Assessment Department, Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety)
Publication Information
Nuclear Engineering and Technology / v.47, no.3, 2015 , pp. 332-339 More about this Journal
Abstract
The leak before break (LBB) concept is widely used in designing pipe lines in nuclear power plants. According to the concept, the amount of leaking liquid from a pipe should be more than the minimum detectable leak rate of a leak detection system before catastrophic failure occurs. Therefore, accurate estimation of the leak rate is important to evaluate the validity of the LBB concept in pipe line design. In this paper, a program was developed to estimate the leak rate through circumferential cracks in pipes in nuclear power plants using the Henry-Fauske flow model and modified Henry-Fauske flow model. By using the developed program, the leak rate was calculated for a circumferential crack in a sample pipe, and the effect of the flow model on the leak rate was examined. Treating the crack morphology parameters as random variables, the statistical behavior of the leak rate was also examined. As a result, it was found that the crack morphology parameters have a strong effect on the leak rate and the statistical behavior of the leak rate can be simulated using normally distributed crack morphology parameters.
Keywords
Circumferential Crack; Henry-Fauske Flow Model; Leak Rate; Pipe; Probabilistic Analysis;
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