• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.39-45
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• 2003

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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.20 no.1 s.69
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• pp.55-61
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of circumferential location of local wall thinning defect on the collapse behavior of an elbow. Thus, the present study conducts three-dimensional finite element analysis on the 90-degree elbow containing a local wall thinning at intrados, crown and extrados of bend region and evaluates the collapse moment of wall thinned elbow under various thinning shapes and loading conditions. Combined internal pressure and bending moment are considered as an applied load. The internal pressure of $0\~20MPa$ and both closing and opening mode bending are employed. The results of analysis show that the reduction in collapse moment of the elbow by local wall thinning is more significant for a defect locating at crown than for a defect locating at intrados or at extrados. Also, the effect of internal pressure on the collapse moment of wall thinned elbow depends on the circumferential location of thinning defect and applied bending mode.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.295-301
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• 2010

Flow accelerated corrosion(FAC) of carbon steel pipes in nuclear power plants has been known as one of the major degradation mechanisms. It could have bad influence on the plant reliability and safety. Also detection of FAC is a significant cost to the nuclear power plant because of the need to remove and replace insulation. Recently, the interest of the guided wave testing(GWT) has grown because it allows long range inspection without removing insulation of the pipe except at the probe position. If GWT can be applied to detection of FAC damages, it will can significantly reduce the cost for the inspection of the pipes. The objective of this study was to determine the capability of GWT to identify location of FAC damages. In this paper, three kinds of techniques were used to measure the amplitude ratio between the first and the second welds at the elbow area of mock-ups that contain real FAC damages. As a result, optimal inspection technique and minimum detectability to detect FAC damages drew a conclusion.