• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.647-657
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• 2012

Although nuclear power plant piping system is designed conforming to design specifications, the piping systems are deteriorated with increase in service life. In this study, monotonic and cyclic loading tests were carried out on TP316 stainless steel pipe specimens, and the effect of local wall thinning and cracking on failure behavior was investigated. In the tests, 0%, 35% and 75% wall thinning and cracking of initial thickness were artificially introduced to inside elbow and straight pipe specimens, and internal pressures of 20MPa were applied to simulate real operation condition. From the test results, the effect of local wall thinning and cracking on failure mode, ultimate load, number of cycle and strain energy was presented, and maximum bending moment was compared with allowable bending moment calculated by ASME code.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.191-198
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• 2008

Flow accelerated corrosion (FAC) phenomenon of low alloy carbon steels in nuclear power plant has been known as one of major degradation mechanisms. It has a potential to cause nuclear pipe rupture accident which may directly impact on the plant reliability and safety. Recently, the equipotential switching direct current potential drop (ES-DCPD) method has been developed, by the present authors, as a method to monitor wall loss in a piping. This method can rapidly monitor the thinning of piping, utilizing either the wide range monitoring (WiRM) or the narrow range monitoring (NaRM) technique. WiRM is a method to monitor wide range of straight piping, whereas NaRM focuses significantly on a narrow range such as an elbow. WiRM and NaRM can improve the reliability of the current FAC screening method that is based on computer modeling on fluid flow conditions. In this paper, the measurements by ES-DCPD are performed with signal sensitivity analyses in the laboratory environment for extended period and showed the viability of ES-DCPD for real plant applications.

• 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.

• Nuclear industry
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.10-16
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• 2008

• 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.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.731-738
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• 2002

To understand failure behavior of pipe thinned by flow accelerated corrosion, in this study, the pipe failure tests were performed on 102mm-Sch.80 carbon steel pipe with various local wall thinning shapes, and the failure mode, load carrying capacity, and deformability were investigated. The tests were conducted under loading conditions of 4-points bending and internal pressure. The experimental results showed that the failure mode of thinned pipe depended on magnitude of internal pressure and thinning length as well as loading direction and thinning depth and angle. The variation in load carrying capacity and deformability of thinned pipe with thinning length was determined by stress type appled to the thinning area and circumferential thinning angle. Also, the effect of internal pressure on failure behavior was dependent on failure mode of thinned pipe, and it promoted crack occurrence and mitigated local buckling at thinned area.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.437-442
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• 2010

Flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) leads to thinning of steel pipe walls that are exposed to flowing water or wet steam. From experience, it is seen that FAC damage to piping at fossil and nuclear plants can result in outages that require expensive repairs and can affect plant reliability and safety. CHECWORKS have been utilized in domestic nuclear plants as a predictive tool to assist FAC engineers in planning inspections and evaluating the inspection data so that piping failures caused by FAC can be prevented. However, CHECWORKS may be occasionally ignore local susceptible portions when predicting FAC damage in a group of pipelines after constructing a database for all the secondary side piping in nuclear plants. This paper describes the methodologies that can complement CHECWORKS and the verifications of CHECWORKS prediction results using numerical analysis. FAC susceptible locations determined using CHECWORKS for two pipeline groups of a nuclear plant was compared with determined using the numerical-analysis-based FLUENT.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.115.1-115.1
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• 2005

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.21 no.1 s.74
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• pp.51-58
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• 2007

This study on the effects of local wall-thinned location on the fracture behavior of pipes was carried out, and the results were compared with the analytical results. Local wall-thinning for the bending test was machined with various sizes on the outside of pipes, in order to simulate the metal loss, due to erosion/corrosion. In addition, we had carried out FE analysis for the pipes with local wall thinning on the inside, and its results were comparatively studied with that of the outside. Three-dimensional elasto-plastic analyses were able to accurately simulate fracture behaviors of inner or outer wall thinning. Fracture types, obtained from the experiments and analyses, could be classified into ovalization, local buckling and crack initiation, depending on the thinned length and thinned ratio. Based on the results, the fracture behaviors of pipes with the outer wall thinning can be applied to estimate the fracture behaviors of pipes with the inner wall thinning.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.10 no.3 s.32
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• pp.7-12
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• 2006

In this paper, a new evaluation scheme is suggested to estimate load-carrying capacities of wall thinned pipes. At first, computational fluid dynamics analyses employing steady-state and incompressible flow are carried out to determine pressure distributions in accordance with conveying fluid. Then, the variational pressures are applied as input condition of structural finite element analyses to calculate local stresses at the deepest point. The efficiency of proposed scheme was proven from comparison to conventional analyses results and it is recommended to consider the fluid structure interaction effect for exact integrity evaluation.