• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.25-30
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• 2013

The periodic inspection of piping and pressure vessels welds in nuclear power plant has to provide reliable result related to weld flaws, such as location, maximum amplitude response, ultrasonic length, height and finally the nature or flaw pattern. The founded flaw in ultrasonic inspection is accepted or rejected based on these data. Specially, the amplitude of flaw response is used as basic parameter for flaw sizing and it may cause some deviation in length sizing result. Currently the ultrasonic inspections in nuclear power plant components are performed by specific inspection procedure which describing inspection technique include inspection system, calibration methodology and flaw characterizing. To perform ultrasonic inspection during in-service inspection, reference gain should be established before starting ultrasonic inspection by the requirement of ASME code. This reference gain used as basic criteria to evaluate flaw sizing. Sometimes, a little difference in establishing reference gain between calibration and field condition can lead to deviation in flaw sizing. Due to this difference, the inspection result may cause flaw sizing error. Therefore, the objective of this study is to compare and evaluate the ultrasonic amplitude difference between air filled and water filled pipe in nuclear power plant. Additionally, the accuracy of flaw sizing is estimated by comparing both conditions.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.577-588
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• 2016

Due to the uncertainties related to the flaw assessment parameters, such as flaw size, fracture toughness, loading spectrum and so on, the probability concept is preferred over deterministic one in flaw assessment. In this study, efforts have been made to develop the reliability based flaw assessment procedure which combines the flaw assessment procedure of BS7910 and first-and second-order reliability methods (FORM/SORM). Both crack length and depth of semi-elliptical surface crack at weld toe were handled as random variable whose probability distribution was defined as Gaussian with certain means and standard deviations. Then the limit state functions from static rupture and fatigue perspective were estimated using FORM and SORM in joint probability space of crack depth and length. The validity of predicted limit state functions were checked by comparing it with those obtained by Monte Carlo simulation. It was confirmed that the developed methodology worked perfectly in predicting the limit state functions without time-consuming Monte Carlo simulation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.278-285
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• 1988

The Critical size of artificially induced micro-holes in 0.17%, 0.36% Carbon steel Specimens with Spheroidized Cementite and in 0.17% carbon steel specimens with martensite structure is compared with annealed pre-crack in order to discuss the physical meaning of the fatigue limit and evaluation of the tolerant micro flaw size at the stress level of the fatigue limit. Results obtained were summarized as follows; (1) In this study, non-propagating crack length of Smooth specimen and critical pre-crack length (lc) is coincide. (2) In the carbon steels with spheroidized cementite structure, critical pre-crack length (lc) and allowable micro-hole size (dc) is coincide each other at the fatigue limit level. (3) It has been published that there exists a particular size of micro-hole which has no effect on the fatigue limit. In this study, the micro-hole of critical size can be regarded as equivalent to a tolerant micro flaw which would not reduce the fatigue limit.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.513-521
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• 2017

The purpose of this paper is to study the capabilities of the impulse response method in length and flaw detecting for concrete piles and provide a suggested method to find small-size flaws in piles. In this work, wavelet transform is used to decompose the recorded time domain signal into a series of levels. These levels are narrowband, so the mix of different dominant bandwidths can be avoided. In this study, the impulse response method is used to analyze the signal obtained from the wavelet transform to improve the judgment of the flaw signal so as to detect the flaw location. This study provides a new way of thinking in non-destructive testing detection. The results show that the length of a pile is easy to be detected in the traditional reflection time or frequency domain method. However, the small flaws within pile are difficult to be found using these methods. The proposed approach in this paper is able to greatly improve the results of small-size flaw detection within piles by reducing the effects of any noise and clarifying the signal in the frequency domains.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.05c
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• pp.193-198
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• 1996

The effect of dynamic strain aging (DSA) on the leak-before-break (LBB) analysis was estimated through the evaluation of leakage-size-crack and flaw stability in SA106 Gr.C piping steel. Also. the results were represented as a form of "LBB allowable load window". In the DSA temperature region. the leakage-size-crack length was smaller than that at other temperatures and it increased with increasing tensile strain rate. In the results of flaw stability analysis. the lowest instability load appeared at the temperature corresponding to minimum J- R curve which was caused by DSA. The instability load near the plant operating temperature depended on the loading rate of J-R data. and decreased with increasing tensile strain rate. These are due to the strain hardening characteristic and strain rate sensitivity of DSA. In the "LBB allowable load window". LBB allowable region was the narrowest at the temperature and loading conditions where DSA occurs.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.351-356
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• 2001

A potential loss of structural integrity due to aging of nuclear piping may have a significant effect on the safety of nuclear power plants. In particular, failures due to the erosion and corrosion defects are a major concern. As a result, there is a need to assess the remaining strength of pipe with erosion/corrosion defects. In this paper, a limit load solution for the eroded and corroded SA106 Grade B pipes subjected by internal pressure is developed. based in 3-D finite element analyses, considering a wide range of the shape of pipeline, flaw depth and axial flaw length parametrically.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.96-101
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• 1998

J-R curve tests were performed on 1T compact specimens of SA516 Gr. 70 carbon steels under reverse cyclic loading. A Direct-Current Potential Drop (DCPD) method, one of the nondestructive techniques to detect flaw of structure, is being increasingly used for monitoring crack initiation and stable crack growth in typical fracture mechanics specimens for J-R testing. In many aspects this method is simpler than the unloading compliance method. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the J-R Curve according to the crack length measurement techniques under reverse cyclic loading. In order to prove the reliability and repeatability of the DCPD method, the crack length measured by using DCPD method was compared to one determined from unloading compliance. Consequently, this DCPD method correlated well with J-R curves and crack extension measurements determined from unloading compliance method.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.1-6
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• 2005

In this study, on automatic ultrasonic testing system is used to detect defects of flawtest specimen. We study the effects of the difference of ultrasonic damped rate of the different materials on the judgment of defects. The results indicate that the difference of sensitivity compensating quantity is 2dB, and the judgment is correct over $90\%$ when a specimen is judged as a defect when it exceeds third grade.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.211-223
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• 2020

The external corrosion of buried piping can be controlled using both coating and cathodic protection. Several factors are involved in the damage and deterioration of the coating on pipes. There are many detection methods for coating defects on pipes and the direct current voltage gradient (DCVG) method is one of the most powerful methods. However, the detection reliability of DCVG can be affected by interferences such as stray current, metal objects connected to rectifiers, and copper grids. Therefore, this study focused on the interference effects of rectifiers and a copper grid on the reliability of coating flaw detection. As the length of the interference pipe connected to the rectifier increased, the reliability decreased. In contrast, as the distance between the pipe and the copper grid increased, the reliability of the coating flaw detection increased. The detection results produced by the DCVG method were discussed using current and potential simulations for a pipe with a rectifier and copper grid interference in the soil.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.170-178
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• 1988

An automated ultrasonic flaw detection system was developed for thin-walled and short tubes such as Zircaloy-4 tubes used for cladding heavy-water reactor fuel. The system was based on the two channels immersion pulse-echo technique using 14 MHz shear wave and the specially developed helical scanning technique, in which the tube to be tested is only rotated and the small water tank with spherical focus ultrasonic transducers is translated along the tube length. The optimum angle of incidence of ultrasonic beam was 26 degrees, at which the inside and outside surface defects with the same size and direction could be detected with the same sensitivity. The maximum permissible defects in the Zircaloy-4 tubes, i.e., the longitudinal and circumferential v notches with the length of 0.76mm and 0.38mm, respectively and the depth of 0.04 mm on the inside and outside surface, could be easily detected by the system with the inspection speed of about 1 m/min and the very excellent reproducibility. The ratio of signal to noise was greater than 20 dB for the longitudinal defects and 12 dB for the circumferential defects.