• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.74-83
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• 2020

A number of so-called 'Type IV' cracking was reported to occur at the welded joints of the P91 steel or P92 steel reheat steam piping systems in Korean supercritical thermal power plants. The reheat steam piping systems are subjected to severe thermal and pressure loading conditions of coolant higher than 570℃ and 4MPa, respectively. In this study, piping analyses and design evaluations were conducted for the piping system of a specific thermal plant in Korea and suggestions were made how structural integrity could be improved so that type IV cracks at the welded joints could be prevented. Integrity evaluations were conducted as per ASME B31.1 code with implicit consideration of creep effects which was used in original design of the piping system and as per nuclear-grade RCC-MRx code with explicit consideration of creep effects. Comparisons were made between the evaluation results from the two design rules. Another approach with modification or reduction of the redundant supports in the piping systems was investigated as a tool to mitigate thermal stresses which should essentially contribute to prevention of Type IV cracking without major modification of the existing piping systems. In addition, a post weld heat treatment method and repair weld method which could improve integrity of the welded joint of P91 steel were investigated.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.29-32
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• 2007

The final goal of this study is to develop the core technologies applicable to the design, operation and maintenance of welds in nuclear structures. This study includes predicting microstructure changes and residual stress for welded parts of nuclear power plant components. Furthermore, researches are performed on evaluating fatigue, corrosion, and hydrogen induced cracking and finally constructs systematically integrated evaluation system for structural integrity of nuclear welded structures. In this study, metallurgical and mechanical approaches have been effectively coordinated considering real welding phenomena in the fields of welds properties such as microstructure, composition and residual stress, and in the fields of damage evaluations such as fatigue, corrosion, fatigue crack propagation, and stress corrosion cracking. Evaluation techniques tried in this study can be much economical and effective in that it uses theoretical/semi-empirical but includes many additional parameters that can be introduced in real phenomena such as phase transformation, strength mismatch and residual stress. It is clear that residual stress makes great contribution to fatigue and stress corrosion cracking. Therefore the mitigation techniques have been approached by reducing the residual stress of selected parts resulting in successful conclusions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.139-145
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• 2007

Fretting is a kind of surface damage mechanism observed in mechanically jointed components and structures. The initial crack under fretting damage occurs at lower stress amplitude and lower cycles of cyclic loading than that under plain fatigue condition. This can be observed in automobile and railway vehicle, fossil and nuclear power plant, aircraft etc. In the present study, railway axle material RSA1 used for evaluation of fretting fatigue life. Plain and fretting fatigue tests were carried out using rotary bending fatigue tester with proving ring and bridge type contact pad. Through these experiments, it is found that the fretting fatigue limit decreased about 37% compared to the plain fatigue limit. In fretting fatigue, the wear debris is observed on the contact surface, and oblique cracks at an earlier stage are initiated in contact area. These results can be used as useful data in a structural integrity evaluation of railway axle.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.1-6
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• 2000

FFP(Fitness For Purpose) type defect assessment methodologies based on ECA(Engineering Critical Analysis) have been established and are in use for the structural integrity evaluation of gas pipelines. ECA usually includes the fracture mechanics analysis, and it assumes that J-integral uniquely characterizes crack-tip stress-strain fields. However, it has been shown that it is not sufficient to characterize the crack-tip field under low levels of constraint with a single parameter. Since pipeline structures are made of ductile material, locally loaded in tension, cracks may experience low level of constraint, and therefore, J-dominance will be lost. For this reason, the level of constraint must be quantified to establish a precise assessment procedure for pipeline defects. The objective of this paper is to Investigate the fracture behavior of a crack in gas pipeline by quantifying the level of constraint. For this purpose, tensile tests and CTOD tests were performed at room temperature$(24^{\circ}C)$ and low temperature$(-40^{\circ}C)$ to obtain the material properties. J-Q analyses were performed for SENB and SENT specimens based on 2-D finite element analyses, in order to investigate the in-plane constraint effects on pipeline defects.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.286-291
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• 2000

The reactor pressure vessel is usually cladded with stainless steel to prevent corrosion and radiation embrittlement, and number of subclad cracks have been found during an in-service-inspection. Therefore assessment for subclad cracks should be made for normal operating conditions and faulted conditions such as PTS. Thus, in order to find the optimum fracture assessment procedures for subclad cracks under a pressurized thermal shock condition, in this paper, three different analyses were performed, ASME Sec. XI code analysis, an LEFM(Liner elastic fracture mechanics) analysis and an EPFM(Elastic plastic fracture mechanics) analysis. The stress intensity factor and the Maximum $RT_{NDT}$ were used for characterizing. Analysis based on ASME Sec. XI code does not completely consider the actual stress distribution of the crack surface, so the resulting Maximum allowable $RT_{NDTS}$ can be non-conservative, especially for deep cracks. LEFM analysis, which does not consider elastic-plastic behavior of the clad material, is much more non-conservative than EPFM analysis. Therefore, It is necessary to perform EPFM analysis for the assessment of subclad cracks under PTS.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.107-115
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• 2018

To ensure the structural integrity of nuclear power plants, it is essential to predict the lifetime of Alloy 182 weld, which is used for welding in nuclear reactors. The lifetime of Alloy 182 weld is directly related to the crack initiation time. Owing to the large time scatter in most crack initiation tests, a probabilistic model, such as the Weibull distribution, has mainly been adopted for prediction. However, since statistically more advanced methods than current typical methods may be applied, we suggest a statistical procedure for parameter estimation of the crack initiation time of Alloy 182 weld, considering right-censored data and the covariate effect. Furthermore, we suggest a procedure for uncertainty evaluation of the estimators based on the bootstrap method. The suggested statistical procedure can be applied not only to Alloy 182 weld but also to any material degradation data set including right-censored data with covariate effect.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.152-162
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• 2001

Laser-generated ultrasonic technique which is one of the reliable nondestructive evaluation techniques has been applied to evaluate the integrity of structures by analyzing the characteristics of signal obtained from surface crack. Therefore, the signal analysis of the laser-generated ultrasonics is absolutely necessary for the accurate and quantitative estimation of the surface defects. In this study, one-sided measurement by laser-generated ultrasonic has been applied to evaluate the depth of the surface-breaking crack in the materials. However, since the ultrasonic waveform excited by pulse laser is very difficult to distinguish the defect signals, it is necessary to consider the signal analyses of the transient waveform. Wavelet Transform(WT) is a powerful tool for processing transient signals with temporally varying spectra that helps to resolve high and low frequency transient components effectively. In this paper, the analyses of the surface-breaking crack of the ultrasonic signal excited by pulse laser are presented by employing the WT analyses.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.756-763
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• 2001

In the process of integrity evaluation for nuclear power plant components, a series of fracture mechanics evaluation on surface cracks in reactor pressure vessel(RPV) must be conducted. These fracture mechanics evaluation are based on stress intensity factor, K. However, under pressurized thermal shock(PTS) conditions, the combination of thermal and mechanical stress by steep temperature gradient and internal pressure causes considerably high tensile stress at the inside of RPV wall. Besides, the internal pressure during the normal operation produces high tensile stress at the RPV wall. As a result, cracks on inner surface of RPVs may experience elastic-plastic behavior which can be explained with J-integral. In such a case, however, J-integral may possibly lose its validity due to constraint effect. In this paper, in order to verify the suitability of J-integral, tow dimensional finite element analyses were applied for various surface cracks. A total of 18 crack geometries were analyzed, and $\Omega$ stresses were obtained by comparing resulting HRR stress distribution with corresponding actual stress distributions. In conclusion, HRR stress fields were found to overestimate the actual crack-tip stress field due to constraint effect.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.1988-1997
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• 2005

This study is concerned with structural integrity evaluations for the interference-fit flywheels in reactor coolant pumps (RCPs) of nuclear power plants. Stresses in the flywheel due to the shrinkage loads and centrifugal loads at the RCP normal operation speed, design overspeed and joint-release speed are obtained using the finite element method (FEM), where release of the deformation-controlled stresses as a result of structural interactions during rotation is considered. Fracture mechanics evaluations for a series of cracks assumed to exist in the flywheel are conducted, considering ductile (fatigue) and non-ductile fracture, and stress intensity factors are obtained for the cracks using the finite element alternating method (FEAM). From analysis results, it is found that fatigue crack growth rates calculated are negligible for smaller cracks. Meanwhile, the material resistance to non-ductile fracture in terms of the critical stress intensity factor (K$_{IC}$) and the nil-ductility transition reference temperature (RT$_{NDT}$) are governing factors for larger cracks.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.1029-1033
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• 2006

During operation of generator, the excitation force with 120Hz always exist irrespective of No. of poles. Therefore the vibration is generated in the stator end windings and the micro-crack is grown up inside the bars. After all, coolant water is leaked outside the bars or the stator is moved and is worn out. What is more, one bar is touched with another bar so a short circuit may frequently happen in operation. In order to prevent it from occurring, the evaluation of mechanical integrity for generator stator windings is carried out periodically during overhaul period. This help troublesome end windings to complement with insulation material and to change vibration characteristics. In this paper, the evaluation of mechanical integrity for generator stator windings is described and the change of vibration characteristics is analysed.