• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.118-123
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• 2004

Cast austenitic stainless steel have been widely used for primary coolant piping in light water reactors. This material is subject to thermal embrittlement at reactor operating temperature. CF-8M and CF-8A cast austenitic stainless steel is used for several components, such as primary coolant piping, elbow, pump casing, and valve bodies in light water reactors. Thermal embrittlement results in spinodal decomposition of delta-ferrite leading to decreased fracture toughness. In this study, the specimens were prepared using an accelerated aging method. The measurement of ferrite content, Charpy impact test and J-R test were performed to verify the predicting equation for aged material properties. In case of above 25% ferrite content, predicted result of J-R curve might be non-conservative.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.131-136
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• 2003

CF8M cast austenitic stainless steel is used for several components such as primary coolant piping, elbow, pump casing, and valve bodies in light water reactors. These components are subject to thermal aging at the reactor operating temperature. Thermal aging results in spinodal decomposition of the delta-ferrite leading to increased strength and decreased toughness. In this study, three kinds of the aged CF8M specimen were prepared using an artificially simulated aging method. The objective of this study is to summarize the method of estimating ferrite contents, Charpy impact energy and J-R curve, and to evaluate the thermal embrittlement of the CF8M cast austenitic stainless steel piping used in the domestic nuclear power plants.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.96-101
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• 2004

Cast austenitic stainless steel is used for several components, such as primary coolant piping, elbow, pump casing and valve bodies in light water reactors. These components are subject to thermal embrittlement at the reactor operating temperature. The objective of this study is to summarize the method of estimating ferrite content, Charpy impact energy and J-R curve and to evaluate the thermal embrittlement of the cast austenitic stainless steel piping used in the domestic nuclear power plants. The result of evaluation, two domestic nuclear power plants used CF-8M and CF-8A material has adequate fracture toughness after saturation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 2010

Cast austenitic stainless steel(CASS) is used in the primary cooling piping system of nuclear power plant for it's relative low cost, corrosion resistance and easy of welding. However, the coarse-grain structure of cast austenitic stainless steel can strongly affect the inspectability of ultrasonic testing. The major problems encountered during inspection are beam skewing, high attenuation and high background noise of CASS component. So far, the best inspection performance involving CASS components have been achieved using low frequency TRL(Transmitter/Receiver side-by-side L wave) angle beam probe. But TRL technique could not detect shallow defect and it contains an uncertainty for sizing capability. Currently, most of researchers are studying to overcome these challenge issue. In this study, low-frequency phased array TRL technique used to detect and sizing the flaws in CF8A cast austenitic stainless steel.As conclusion, we could detect and size not only axial flaw but also circumferential flaw using low frequency phased array technique.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.1174-1179
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• 2003

Cast austenitic stainless steel is used for several components, such as primary coolant piping, elbow, pump casing and valve bodies in light water reactors. These components are subject to thermal aging at the reactor operating temperature. Thermal aging results in spinodal decomposition of the delta-ferrite leading to increased strength and decreased toughness. This study shows that ferrite content can be predicted by use of the artificial neural network. The neural network has trained learning data of chemical components and ferrite contents using backpropagation learning process. The predicted results of the ferrite content using trained neural network are in good agreement with experimental ones.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.460-466
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• 2004

Cast austenitic stainless steel is used for several components, such as primary coolant piping, elbow, pump casing and valve bodies in light water reactors. These components are subject to thermal aging at the reactor operating temperature. Thermal aging results in spinodal decomposition of the delta-ferrite leading to increased strength and decreased toughness. This study shows that ferrite content can be predicted by use of the artificial neural network. The neural network has trained teaming data of chemical components and ferrite contents using backpropagation learning process. The predicted results of the ferrite content using trained neural network are in good agreement with experimental ones.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.171-178
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• 2023

For the phase boundary crack found in the gasket made of cast austenitic stainless steel in the nuclear power plant, the oxide layers were analyzed through SEM and TEM. The results showed that cracks initiated and propagated along the austenite/δ-ferrite phase boundary, the propagation path was changed to penetrate the inside of the phase. The oxide layer located at the periphery of the crack along the phase boundary was identified as a complex multi-layered spinel structure, and Cr-rich carbides were also detected in the oxide. The cracks that propagated inside the austenite matrix were attributed to the presence of high external stresses and impurities.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.280-285
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• 2001

Nb-containing austenitic stainless steel is widely used as exhaust frame and diffuser assembly in power plant. However, this steel is known to be difficult to produce by the continuous casting process due to the surface cracks. Therefore, the continuous casting technology was developed for the prevention of the surface cracks on CC slabs. Precipitates and the analysis of heat trasfer in a slab were investigated in order to find out the formation mechanism of surface cracks on cc slabs It was found that surface cracks are occurred due to the NbC precipitates, which are formed along the grain boundaries around $800^{\circ}C$. The secondary cooling pattern has been developed to produce the defect free CC slabs of Nb-containing austenitic stainless steel.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.1167-1174
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• 2022

Cast austenitic stainless steels (CASSs) are widely used as structural materials in the nuclear industry. The main drawback of CASSs is the reduction in fracture toughness due to long-term exposure to operating environment. Even though ultrasonic non-destructive testing has been conducted in major nuclear components and pipes, the detection of cracks is difficult due to the scattering and attenuation of ultrasonic waves by the coarse grains and the inhomogeneity of CASS materials. In this study, the ultrasonic signals measured in thermally aged CASS were discriminated for the first time with the simple ultrasonic technique (UT) and machine learning (ML) models. Several different ML models, specifically the K-nearest neighbors (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) models, were used to classify the ultrasonic signals as thermal aging condition of CASS specimens. We identified that the ML models can predict the category of ultrasonic signals effectively according to the aging condition.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.291-296
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• 2004

Cast austenitic stainless steel piping pump, valve casings, and elbows are susceptible to reductions in toughness and ductility because of long term exposure at the operating temperatures in LWR(light water reactor). In this paper, we have measured the material properties of long term aged CF-8A cast stainless steel, accelerated aging at $400^{\circ}C$. These studies have been carried out using Indentation tests(automated ball indentation and nano-indentation) and EDS(energy dispersive spectroscopy). The fracture toughness of CF-8A cast stainless steel was also determined by using standard fracture toughness and Automated Ball Indentation.