• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.8-17
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• 2003

Fracture behaviors of pipes with local wall thinning are very important for the integrity of nuclear Power Plant. In Pipes of energy Plants, sometimes, the local wall thinning may result from severe erosion-corrosion (E/C) damage. However, the effects of local wall thinning on strength and fracture behaviors of piping system were not well studied. In this paper, the monotonic bending tests were performed of full-scale carbon steel pipes with local wall thinning. A monotonic bending load was applied to straight pipe specimens by four-point loading at ambient temperature without internal pressure. From the tests, fracture behaviors and fracture strength of locally thinned pipe were manifested systematically. The observed failure modes were divided into four types; ovalization. crack initiation/growth after ovalization, local buckling and crack initiation/growth after local buckling. Also, the strength and the allowable limit of piping system with local wall thinning were evaluated.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.29 no.10 s.241
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• pp.1399-1406
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• 2005

Recently authors have proposed a new method to estimate failure strength of a pipe with local wall thinning subject to either internal pressure or global bending. The proposed method was based on the equivalent stress averaged over the minimum ligament in the locally wall thinned region, and the simple scheme to estimate the equivalent stress in the minimum ligament was proposed, based on the reference stress concept. This paper extends the new method to combined internal pressure and global bending. The proposed method is validated against FE results for various geometries of local wall thinning under combined loading. The effect of internal pressure is also investigated in the present study. Comparison of maximum moments, predicted according to the proposed method, with published full-scale pipe test data fur locally wall-thinned pipes under combined internal pressure and global bending, shows good agreement.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.03a
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• pp.351-359
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• 2010

Large PHC piles with a diameter of 1,000mm or larger were recently introduced for the first time in Korea. This paper presents full-scale static and dynamic pile load tests performed on two 1,000mm PHC piles and two composite piles with steel pipe piles of the same diameter in the upper portion, installed by driving and pre-boring. The objectives of the tests include evaluating pile drivability, load-settlement relation, allowable bearing capacity, and the stability of mechanical splicing element for the composite pile(a.k.a. non-welding joint). The performance of the large diameter PHC piles were thought to be satisfactory compared to that of middle sized PHC piles with a long history of successful applications in the domestic and foreign markets.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2011

Advanced SITs of the evolutionary PWRs have the advantage that they can passively control the ECC water discharge flow rate. Thus, the LPSI pumps can be eliminated from the safety injection system owing to the benefit of the advanced SITs. In the present study, a passive sealing plate was designed in order to overcome the shortcoming of the advanced SITs, i.e., the early nitrogen discharge through the stand pipe. The operating principle of the sealing plate depends only on the natural phenomena of buoyancy and gravity. The performance of the sealing plate was evaluated using the VAPER test facility, equipped with a full-scale SIT. It was verified that the passive sealing plate effectively prevented the air discharge during the entire duration of the ECC water discharge. Also, the major performance parameters of the advanced SIT were not changed with the installation of the sealing plate.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3342-3351
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• 2023

High-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipelines in nuclear power plants (NPPs) have to meet high requirements for seismic performance. HDPE pipes have been proved to have good seismic performance, but joints are the weak links in the pipelines, and pipeline failures usually initiate from the defects inside the joints. Limited data are available on the seismic performance of butt-fusion joints of HDPE pipelines in NPPs, especially in terms of defects changes inside the joints after earthquakes. In this paper, full-scale shaking table tests were performed on a test section of suspended HDPE pipelines in an NPP, which included straight pipes, elbows, and 10 butt-fusion joints. During the tests, the seismic load-induced strain of the joints was analyzed by strain gauges, and it was much smaller than the internal pressure and self-weight-induced strain. Before and after the shaking table tests, phased array ultrasonic testing (PA-UT) was conducted to detect defects inside the joints. The locations, numbers, and dimensions of the defects were analyzed. It was found that defects were more likely to occur in elbows joints. No new defect was observed after the shaking table tests, and the defects showed no significant growth, indicating the satisfactory seismic performance of the butt-fusion joints.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.742-749
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• 2003

Failure of a pipeline due to local wall thinning is getting more attention in the nuclear power plant industry. Although guidelines such as ANSI/ASME B31G and ASME Code Case N597 are still useful fer assessing the integrity of a wall thinned pipeline, there are some limitations in these guidelines. For instance, these guidelines consider only pressure loading and thus neglect bending loading. However, most Pipelines in nuclear power plants are subjected to internal pressure and bending moment due to dead-weight loads and seismic loads. Therefore, an assessment procedure for locally wall thinned pipeline subjected to combined loading is needed. In this paper, three-dimensional finite element(FE) analyses were performed to simulate full-scale pipe tests conducted for various shapes of wall thinned area under internal pressure and bending moment. Maximum moments based on true ultimate stress(${\alpha}$$\sub$u,t/) were obtained from FE results to predict the failure of the pipe. These results were compared with test results, which showed good agreement. Additional finite element analyses were performed to investigate the effect of key parameters, such as wall thinned depth, wall thinned angle and wall thinned length, on maximum moment. Also, the effect of internal pressure on maximum moment was investigated. Change of internal pressure did not show significant effect on the maximum moment.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.64 no.5
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• pp.671-681
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• 2017

This study investigates the structural performance of 3D steel pipe rack suspended scaffolding systems. For the purpose, a standard full scale 3D steel pipe rack suspended scaffolding system considering two frames, two plane trusses, purlins and wooden floor is constructed in the laboratory. A developed load transmission system was placed in these experimental systems to distribute single loads to the center of a specific area in a step-by-step manner using a load jack. After each load increment, the displacements are measured by means of linear variable differential transducers placed in several critical points of the system. The tests are repeated for five different system conditions to determine the structural performance. The means of system conditions is the numbers of the tie bars which are used to connect plane trusses under level. Finite elements models of the 3D steel pipe rack suspended scaffolding systems considering different systems conditions are constituted using SAP2000 software to support the experimental tests and to use the models in future studies. Each of models including load transmission platform is analyzed under a single loading and the displacements are obtained. In addition, to calibrate the numerical models some uncertain parameters such as elasticity modulus of wooden floor and connection rigidity of purlins to plane trusses are assessed experimentally. The results of this work demonstrate that when increasing numbers of tie bars the displacement values are decreased. Also the results obtained from developed numerical models have harmony with those of experimental. In addition, the scaffolding system with two tie bars at the beginning and at the end of the plane truss has the optimum structural performance compared the results obtained for other scaffolding system conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.8-14
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• 2017

One of the main causes of gas pipeline accidents is mechanical impact(third party damage). The majority of high pressure gas pipelines buried in major domestic industrial complexes are old pipes which have being operated over 20 years. Therefore, if an accident occurs, there will be a full scale accident because there is no additional inspection and reinforcement time. In this study, the defects on the piping during the mechanical impact were studied through the third party damage(excavation) experiments. Experiments were carried out using the 21 ton excavator which is operated in the actual excavation work and the type of pipe to be struck are ASTM A106 Grade.B and ASTM A53 Grade.B. As a result, when the bucket used during excavator operation is a sawtooth bucket, the defect is more bigger. And the smaller the diameter of the pipe, the smaller the depth and length of the defect. Also, it was confirmed that the impact height had no effect on the defects on the buried pipe, during the excavation work.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.321-332
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• 2017

The reverse fault is a dangerous geological hazard faced by buried steel pipelines. Permanent ground deformation along the fault trace will induce large compressive strain leading to buckling failure of the pipe. A hybrid pipe-shell element based numerical model programed by INP code supported by ABAQUS solver was proposed in this study to explore the strain performance of buried X80 steel pipeline under reverse fault displacement. Accuracy of the numerical model was validated by previous full scale experimental results. Based on this model, parametric analysis was conducted to study the effects of four main kinds of parameters, e.g., pipe parameters, fault parameters, load parameter and soil property parameters, on the strain demand. Based on 2340 peak strain results of various combinations of design parameters, a semi-empirical model for strain demand prediction of X80 pipeline at reverse fault crossings was proposed. In general, reverse faults encountered by pipelines are involved in 3D oblique reverse faults, which can be considered as a combination of reverse fault and strike-slip fault. So a compressive strain demand estimation procedure for X80 pipeline crossing oblique-reverse faults was proposed by combining the presented semi-empirical model and the previous one for compression strike-slip fault (Liu 2016). Accuracy and efficiency of this proposed method was validated by fifteen design cases faced by the Second West to East Gas pipeline. The proposed method can be directly applied to the strain based design of X80 steel pipeline crossing oblique-reverse faults, with much higher efficiency than common numerical models.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.9 no.3 s.28
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• pp.1-8
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• 2005

We studied on the nondestructive evaluation of the elastic wave signals of locally wall thinned straight pipe. Wavelet transform was applied for the time-frequency analysis of waveforms obtained by fracture wave detector due to the dropping steel ball. The time-frequency analysis provides time variation of each frequency component involved in a waveform, which makes it possible to evaluate the shape of local wall thinning at each frequency. In this study, comparison by wavelet transform of the AE signals and monotonic bending tests without internal pressure are conducted on 1.91 inch diameter full-scale carbon steel pipe specimens. As the results of tests, fracture behaviors could be shown by the characteristic of mechanical strength of locally wall thinned pipes and the waveforms could be evaluated for the integrity insurance of the piping system according to the length and depth range of the deffeted shape pipes in the real field.