• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.1-8
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• 2017

P-PIE is a program developed to estimate failure probability of pipes and pressure vessels considering fatigue and stress corrosion crack growth. Using the program, crack growth simulation was performed with an initially existing crack in order to examine the effects of initial crack depth distribution on the leak probability of pipes. In the simulation stress corrosion crack growth was considered and several crack depth distribution models were used. From the results it was found that the initial crack depth distribution gives great effect on the leak probability of pipes. The log-normal distribution proposed by Khaleel and Simonen gives lower leak probability compared other exponential distribution models. The effects of the number and the quality of pre-service and in-service inspections on the leak probability were also examined and it was recognized that the number and the quality of pre-service and in-service inspections are also give great effect on the leak probability. In order to reduce the leak probability of pipes in plants it is very important to improve the quality of inspections. When in-service inspection is performed every 10 years and the quality of inspection is above the very good level, the leak probability shows nearly constant value after the first inspection for an initially existing crack.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.43-49
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• 2010

The piping failure probability of the reactor coolant system in Kori unit 1 was evaluated considering stress corrosion cracking. The P-PIE program (Probabilistic Piping Integrity Evaluation Program) developed in this study was used in the analysis. The effect of some variables such as oxygen concentration during start up and steady state operation, and operating temperature, which are related with stress corrosion cracking, on the piping failure probabilities was investigated. The effects of leak detection capability, the size of big leak, piping loops, and reactor types on the piping failure probability were also investigated. The results show that (1) LOCA (loss of coolant accident) probability of Kori unit 1 is extremely low, (2) leak probability is sensitive to oxygen concentration during steady state operation and operating temperature, while not sensitive to the oxygen concentration during start up, and (3) the piping thickness and operating temperature play important roles in the leak probabilities of the cold leg in 4 reactor types having same inner diameter.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.6-12
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• 2011

The failure probabilities of pipes in nuclear power plants due to stress corrosion are obtained using the P-PIE program, which is developed for evaluating failure probability of pipes based on the existing PRAISE program. Leak, big leak and LOCA(loss of coolant accident) probabilities are calculated as a function of operating time for several pipes in a domestic nuclear plant. The sensitivity analysis is also performed to find out the important parameters for the failure of pipes due to stress corrosion. The results show that the steady state oxygen concentration and steady state temperature are important parameters and failure probability is very low when the oxygen concentration is maintained according to the regulation.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.44-52
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• 2014

Leakage is an important factor to be considered for the management of underground water supply pipelines in a smart water grid system, especially if the pipelines are aged and buried under the pavement or various structures of a highly populated city. Because the exact detection of the location of such leaks in pipelines is essential for their efficient operation, a new methodology for leak location detection based on frequency band variation, windowing filters, and probability is proposed in this paper. Because the exact detection of the leak location depends on the precision of estimation of time delay between sensor signals due to leak noise, some window functions that offer weightings at significant frequencies are applied for calculating the improved cross-correlation function. Experimental results obtained by applying this methodology to an actual buried water supply pipeline, ~ 253.9 m long and made of cast iron, revealed that the approach of frequency band variation with those windows and probability offers better performance for leak location detection.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.41-55
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• 2018

Accidental oil and gas leak is a critical concern for the offshore industry because it can lead to severe consequences and as a result, it is imperative to evaluate the probabilities of occurrence of the consequences of the leakage in order to assess the risk. Event Tree Analysis (ETA) is a technique to identify the consequences that can result from the occurrence of a hazardous event. The probability of occurrence of the consequences is evaluated by the ETA, based on the failure probabilities of the sequential events. Conventional ETA deals with events with crisp failure probabilities. In offshore applications, it is often difficult to arrive at a single probability measure due to lack of data or imprecision in data. In such a scenario, fuzzy set theory can be applied to handle imprecision and data uncertainty. This paper presents fuzzy ETA (FETA) methodology to compute the probability of the outcomes initiated due to oil/gas leak in an actual offshore-onshore installation. Post FETA, sensitivity analysis by Fuzzy Weighted Index (FWI) method is performed to find the event that has the maximum contribution to the severe sequences. It is found that events of 'ignition', spreading of fire to 'equipment' and 'other areas' are the highest contributors to the severe consequences, followed by failure of 'leak detection' and 'fire detection' and 'fire water not being effective'. It is also found that the frequency of severe consequences that are catastrophic in nature obtained by ETA is one order less than that obtained by FETA, thereby implying that in ETA, the uncertainty does not propagate through the event tree. The ranking of severe sequences based on their probability, however, are identical in both ETA and FETA.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.235-243
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• 2007

Nowadays, in our country, large vacuum chambers for huge experimental facilities such as the tokamak fusion device, high power neural beam test stand, and space simulator have been constructed. In such a vacuum chamber of very large size, it is quite complicate to check on leakage quantitatively, while the probability of a leak is relatively high. To investigate the feasibility of applying reliably a helium leak detection to the huge vacuum chambers, and to find a reasonable methodology of choosing an optimum set-up for leak detection, several virtual constructions of the leak detection system have been analyzed by calculating the pressure distribution in the system and the helium level in the sensor part.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.25-30
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• 2015

In the present study, complex leakage probabilities of nuclear pipes due to fatigue and stress corrosion cracking are evaluated by using the PINTIN(Piping INTegrity INner flaws) that is developed based on the existing PRAISE(Piping Reliability Analysis Including Seismic Events) program. With regard to the aging and crack instability, small leak and big leak probabilities are calculated for several pipes in a reactor coolant system of domestic nuclear plant. Moreover, sensitivity analysis is also performed to find out the effect of parameters for the leakage of pipes, which shows the coolant temperature is the most influencing parameter.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.739-754
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• 2019

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a reliability estimation procedure for the underground gas pipeline in the presence of corrosion defects. Methods: Corrosion is one of the major causes of the gas pipeline failure. Several failure forms caused by corrosion have been studied. Among them, small leak and burst are considered in this paper. The composite failure of the two is defined by limit state function, and it is expressed with pipe parameters. Given a modified corrosion dataset, in order to obtain reliability estimations, the method of first order and second moment is adopted because of its simplicity. The computation processes are conducted with MATLAB coding. Results: According to numerical results, the probability of composite failure is affected by both small leak and burst. In particular, when corrosion depth stays at low level, it is consistent with the probability of burst failure. On the contrary, it is more influenced by the small leak failure as corrosion depth is increasing. In such case, the probability of composite failure is fast approaching to the safety limit. Conclusion: By considering the composite failure, more practical predictions of remaining life can be obtained. The proposed method is useful for maintenance planning of the underground gas pipeline.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.13-22
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• 2012

According to recent research on leak-rate estimates to assess rupture probabilities of nuclear piping which contains a circumferential surface/through-wall cracks due to PWSCC, i.e., xLPR (Extremely Low Probability of Rupture) program, it has been revealed that the use of crack shape with an idealized circumferential through-wall crack during actual crack growth can lead to overestimate of the leak-rate. Thus, for accurate estimation of the leak-rate during crack growth, the more realistic crack shape that can simulate the crack shape transition from surface crack to through-wall crack should be used. In this context, in the present study, the elastic crack opening displacement of slanted circumferential through-wall crack in thick-walled cylinder was proposed based on 3-dimensional elastic finite element fracture mechanics analyses. To propose the elastic crack opening displacement of slanted circumferential through-wall crack in thick-walled cylinder, the geometric variables affecting crack opening displacement, i.e., thickness of cylinder, reference inner crack length and slant crack ratio were systematically varied. In terms of loading conditions, axial tension, global bending moment and internal pressure were considered. The present results can be applied to calculate the leak-rate considering more realistic crack shape transition from surface crack to idealized through-wall crack, and can be expected to enhance current leak-rate estimation scheme, for instance, in xLPR program etc.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.136-142
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• 2014

Recently a new version of PRO-LOCA program was released. Using the program, failure probability of pipes can be evaluated considering fatigue and/or stress corrosion crack growth and the effects of various parameters on the integrity of pipes in nuclear power plants can be evaluated quantitatively. The analysis results can be used to establish an inspection plan and to examine the effects of important parameters in a maintenance plan. In this study, sensitivity analyses were performed using the program for several important parameters including sampling method, initial crack size, number of initial fabrication flaws, operation temperature, inspection interval, operation temperature and nominal applied bending stress. The effect of parameters on the leak and rupture probability of pipes was evaluated due to fatigue or stress corrosion crack growth.