• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.103-109
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• 2016

Polyethylene pipes has useful benefits which are anti-corrosive and flexible material, so it is used to gas pipes but also class 3 water pipes of nuclear power plant, process pipes of petrochemical plant and chemical plant. So the usage of polyethylene pipes is widely increased. But it has been limited for the usage of polyethylene, because it can not be directly detected to fusion joints by using non destructive evaluation. Polyethylene pipes are connected by two methods, one is butt fusion and the other is electrofusion. Butt fusion is widely used to connecting the pipes. It is proposed to method for determining the reliability of joints in this study that is detection of the melt flow zone at fusion joints. In this study, middle density polyethylene is used, outside diameter of the test specimen is 225mm and thickness is 20.5mm. Speed of ultrasonic of this test specimen is 2,200m/s. Test specimens were fabricated by varying the heating time which means from 0% to 130% applying time through heating plate to polyethylene for detecting melt flow zone. Also 4 additional test specimens were made, one was made that not scrapping attached surface of pipes but applying 100% of the proper heating time and the others were made to include of soil, gravel and vinly tape paper at fusion joints, that were also applied 100% of proper heating time. Ultrasonic testing to measure the melt flow zone of 20 test specimens was conducted by using 3.5MHz and 5.0MHz ultrasonic probes and melt flow zone measuring was conducted to three times at different point to one specimen. To differentiate the melt flow zone signal, post image processing was equally conducted to all test results and image levels, contrast, sharpen, threshold were adopted to all teat results and the test results were displayed gray scale. From the results, for the shorter heating times the reflection area of multiple echo have been increased, so the data was obtained from the position where it can be eliminated as much as possible. At 80% of proper heating time(168 sec.), the signal of melt flow zone was obtained clearly, so measuring could be conducted. From 7% of proper heating time(15 sec.) to shorter heating times. we could not obtain the signal because test specimen was not fused. From the result, we can verify that measuring of melt flow zone by using phased array ultrasonic imaging method is possible. And we can verify to complete and incomplete butt fusion by measuring the melt flow zone.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.38 no.7
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• pp.809-815
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• 2014

The induction heating bending process, which has been recently applied to nuclear piping, can generate residual stresses due to thermomechanical mechanism during the process. This residual stress is one of the crack driving forces that have important effects on crack initiation and propagation. However, previous studies have focused only on geometric shape variations such as the change in thickness and ovality. Moreover, very few studies are available on the effects of process variables on residual stresses. This study investigated the effects of process variables on the residual stress distributions of induction heating bended austenitic stainless steel (316 series) piping using parametric finite element analysis. The results indicated that the heat generation rate and feed velocity have significant effects on the residual stresses whereas the moment and bending angle have insignificant effects.

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.40-48
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• 2008

Air mixing system which is composed of air pressure control system, hot pipe system and air mixer, is the facility for mixing hot air($1000^{\circ}C$, 10kg/s) from storage air heater (SAH) and decompressed air($20^{\circ}C$, 15kg/s) from high pressure air supply system. Air pressure control system reduce the pressure of the air, from 32MPa to 3.5 MPa and supply the decompressed air to air mixer. The hot pipe system supply hot air from SAH to air mixer which mix hot with the decompressed air from air pressure control system. Fully mixed air flow rate is 25kg/s and mixed temperature is up to $400^{\circ}C$. So, we can expand the operating envelop of the supersonic ground test facility to low Mach number and low altitude region.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.975-978
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• 2004

There was transient vibration on the piping system from #4 heater to the deaerator in a power plant. We found it was resulted from resonance between the natural vibration of the piping system and vibration induced by flow of feedwater. We verified it would reduce vibration by increasing stiffness of the piping system. Therefore we concluded that it would be generally better to increase stiffness of the piping system to reduce vibration amplitude of 10Hz low for big sized piping systems.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.35-40
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• 2016

In this study, the thermal and fluid dynamic characteristics for the coating process of large-sized water pipes was studied by heating the inside of a pipe directly with a gas burner. Heat and flow analyses were performed on large pipes with various inlet shapes. Using large pipes for coating was shown to be the proper shape for heating large pipes uniformly. This type has a screw with a diameter of 200 mm installed at the inlet to provide a rotational motion to the heating air. The rotational motion resulted in a uniform temperature distribution that ranged from $289.1^{\circ}C$ to $352.1^{\circ}C$ The optimized geometric configuration of the inlet of the pipe successfully and uniformly enhanced the thermal characteristics of the devised temperature limit.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.12-19
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• 2012

This study conducted infrared (IR) thermography tests using pipe and plate specimens with artificial wall-thinning defects to find an optimal condition for IR thermography test on the wall-thinned nuclear piping components. In the experiment halogen lamp was used to heat the specimens. The distance between the specimen and the lamp and the intensity of halogen lamp were regarded as experimental parameter. When the distance was set to 1~2 m and the lamp intensity was above 60 % of full power, a single scanning of IR thermography detected all artificial wall-thinning defects, whose minimum dimension was $2{\Theta}=90^{\circ}$, d/t=0.5, and $L/D_o=0.25$, within the pipe of 500 mm in length. Regardless of the distance between the specimen and the lamp, the image of wall-thinning defect in IR thermography became distinctive as the intensity of halogen lamp increased. The detectability of IR thermography was similar for both plate and pipe specimens, but the optimal test condition for IR thermography depended on the type of specimen.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.119-128
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• 1997

A method to mitigate the thermal stratification flow of a horizontal pipe line is proposed by heating external bottom of the pipe with electrical heat tracing. Unsteady two dimensional model has been used to numerically investigate an effect of the external heating on the thermal stratification flow. The dimensionless governing equations are solved by using the control volume formulation and SIMPLE algorithm. Temperature distribution, streamline profile and Nusselt number distributions are analyzed under heating conditions. The numerical results of this study show that the maximum dimensionless temperature difference between hot and cold sections of the inner wall of pipe is 0.424 at dimensionless time of 1,500 and the thermal stratification phenomenon disappears at about dimensionless time of 9,000.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.11-17
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• 2015

High-density polyethylene (HDPE) piping, which has recently been applied to safety class III piping in nuclear power plants, can be butt-joined through the thermal fusion process, which heats two fused surfaces and then subject to axial pressure. The thermal fusion process generates bead shapes on the butt fusion. The stress concentrations caused by the bead shapes may reduce the fatigue lifetime. Thus, investigating the effect of the thermal butt fusion beads on fatigue behavior is necessary. This study examined the fatigue behavior of thermal butt fusion via a tensile fatigue test under stress-controlled conditions using finite element elastic stress analysis. Based on the results, the presence of thermal butt fusion beads was confirmed to reduce the fatigue lifetime in the low-cycle fatigue region while having a negligible effect in the medium- and high-cycle fatigue regions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.7
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• pp.717-722
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• 2011

The aim of this study is to identify the locations at which local wall thinning occurs and to determine the turbulence coefficients related to local wall thinning. Experiments and numerical analyses of the tee sections of different down-scaled piping components were performed and the results were compared. Numerical analyses of full-scale models of actual plants were performed in order to simulate the flow behaviors inside the piping components. In order to determine the relationship between the turbulence coefficients and the rate of local wall thinning, numerical analyses of the tee components in the main feedwater systems were performed. The turbulence coefficients obtained from the numerical analyses were compared with the local wear rate obtained from the measurement data. From the comparison of the results, the vertical flow velocity component (Vr) flowing to the wall after separating in the wall due to the geometrical configuration and colliding with the wall directly at an angle of some degree was analogous to the configuration of local wall thinning.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.321-331
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• 2015

A study on the application of cooling defect detection was performed on the basis of a preceding study on the heated defect detection in nuclear piping loop system, using lock-in infrared thermography. A loop system with piping defects was made by varying the wall-thinning length, the circumference orientation angle, and the wall-thinning depth. The test was performed using an IR camera and a cooling device. Distance between the cooling device and the target loop system was fixed at 2 m. For analyzing experimental results, the temperature distribution data for cooling, and phase data were obtained. Through the analysis of this data, the defect length was measured. The reliability of the measurements for cooling defect conditions was shown to be higher in the lock-in infrared thermography data than the infrared thermography data.