• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.54-62
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• 2009

The feedwater heaters are Critical components in a nuclear power plant. As the operation years of heaters go by, the maintenance costs required for continuous operation increase. When the carbon steel components in nuclear make contact with running fluid, the wall thinning caused by FAC (flow accelerated corrosion) can be generated. Local wall thinning is inevitable at the area around wet steam entrance to be attacked due to the long term operation. Sometimes the shell with thinned wall is eventually ruptured. To identify the relationship between the local wall thinning and fluid behavior of the feedwater heater, the practical data of a plant, which were based on ultrasonic thickness measurement tests, were analyzed and CFD(Computed Fluid Dynamics) analyses were performed.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.7
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• pp.717-722
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• 2011

The aim of this study is to identify the locations at which local wall thinning occurs and to determine the turbulence coefficients related to local wall thinning. Experiments and numerical analyses of the tee sections of different down-scaled piping components were performed and the results were compared. Numerical analyses of full-scale models of actual plants were performed in order to simulate the flow behaviors inside the piping components. In order to determine the relationship between the turbulence coefficients and the rate of local wall thinning, numerical analyses of the tee components in the main feedwater systems were performed. The turbulence coefficients obtained from the numerical analyses were compared with the local wear rate obtained from the measurement data. From the comparison of the results, the vertical flow velocity component (Vr) flowing to the wall after separating in the wall due to the geometrical configuration and colliding with the wall directly at an angle of some degree was analogous to the configuration of local wall thinning.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.402-409
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of local wall thinning on the collapse of elbow subjected to internal pressure and bending moment. Thus, the nonlinear three-dimensional finite element analyses were performed to obtain the collapse moment of elbow containing various wall thinning defects located at intrados and extrados under two loading modes (closing and opening modes) with internal pressure. From the results of analysis, the effect of wall thinning defect on the global moment-rotation behavior of elbow was discussed, and the dependence of collapse moment of elbow on wall thinning depth, length, and circumferential angle was investigated under different loading mode and defect location.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.1014-1020
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• 2004

The present work complies the elastic stress concentration factor for a pipe with local wall thinning, based on detailed three-dimensional elastic FE analysis. To cover practically interesting cases, a wide range of pipe and defect geometries are considered, and both internal pressure and global bending are considered. Resulting values of stress concentration factors are tabulated for practical use, and the effect of relevant parameters such as pipe and defect geometries on stress concentration factors are discussed. The present results would provide valuable information to estimate fatigue damage of the pipe with local wall thinning under high cycle fatigue.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.66-73
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• 2014

This study was considered to occur the local wall thinning at elbow which is flowing the steam and high-pressure water of high-temperature. The angle of elbow is ${\Theta}=45^{\circ}$ and $67.545^{\circ}$. The damage behaviors of inner or outer wall thinning elbow under internal pressure were calculated by FEA(finite element analysis). We compared the simulated results by FEA with experimental data. The FEA results are as follows: In the FEA results of three types of wall thinning ratio, the circumferential and longitudinal stresses show the similar values regardless of the angle of elbow, respectively. The circumferential strain was greater at elbow of small angle, but the longitudinal strain was nearly same. The FEM stress of outer wall thinning elbow was slightly higher than that of the inner wall thinning elbow, and strain was also slightly higher. In the experiments, the circumferential strain was increased with the increase in the internal pressure, and increased rapidly on about 0.2% of strain. The longitudinal strain was small. The strain at break was much smaller than 0.2%. In the relation between pressure and eroded ratio, the criteria that can be used safely under operating pressure and design pressure were obtained. The results of FEA were in relatively good agreement with those of the experiment.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.731-738
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• 2002

To understand failure behavior of pipe thinned by flow accelerated corrosion, in this study, the pipe failure tests were performed on 102mm-Sch.80 carbon steel pipe with various local wall thinning shapes, and the failure mode, load carrying capacity, and deformability were investigated. The tests were conducted under loading conditions of 4-points bending and internal pressure. The experimental results showed that the failure mode of thinned pipe depended on magnitude of internal pressure and thinning length as well as loading direction and thinning depth and angle. The variation in load carrying capacity and deformability of thinned pipe with thinning length was determined by stress type appled to the thinning area and circumferential thinning angle. Also, the effect of internal pressure on failure behavior was dependent on failure mode of thinned pipe, and it promoted crack occurrence and mitigated local buckling at thinned area.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.29 no.4 s.235
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• pp.606-613
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• 2005

Effects of circumferentially local wall thinning on the fracture behavior of pipes were investigated by monotonic four-point bending. Local wall thinning was machined on the pipes in order to simulate erosion/corrosion metal loss. The configurations of the eroded area included an eroded ratio of d/t= 0.2, 0.5, 0.6, and 0.8, and an eroded length of ${\ell}\;=10mm,$ 25mm, and 120mm. Fracture type could be classified into ovalization, local buckling, and crack initiation depending on the eroded length and eroded ratio. Three-dimensional elasto-plastic analyses were also carried out using the finite element method, which is able to accurately simulate fracture behaviors excepting failure due to cracking. It was possible to predict the crack initiation point by estimating true fracture ductility under multi-axial stress conditions at the center of the thinned area.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.76-83
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• 2014

This study was carried out an experimental and finite element analysis on the fracture behavior of straight pipes with local wall thinning under internal pressure. Local wall thinning was machined on the pipes in order to simulate erosion/corrosion metal loss. The configurations of the eroded area has an eroded ratio of d/t=0.80~0.92 and an eroded length of l=25, 50 and 102 mm. Three-dimensional elastic-plastic analyses were also carried out using the finite element method, which is able to accurately simulate failure behaviors. In regards to the relation ship between pressure and eroded ratio, the criterion that can be used safely under operating pressure and design pressure were obtained from this calculation. The results of this calculation were in relatively good agreement with that of the experiment.

• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.134-139
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• 2002

Fracture behaviors of pipes with local wall thinning are very important for the integrity of nuclear power plant. However, effects of local wall thinning on strength and fracture behaviors of piping system were not well studied. Acoustic emission(AE) has been widely used in various fields because of its extreme sensitivity, dynamic detection ability and location of growing defects. In this study, we investigated failure modes of locally wall thinned pipes and AE signals by bending test. From test results, we could be divided four types of failure modes of ovalization, crack initiation after ovalization, local buckling and crack initiation after local buckling. And fracture behaviors such as elastic region, yielding range, plastic deformation range and crack progress could be evaluated by AE counts, accumulative counts and time-frequency analysis during bending test. It is expected to be basic data that can protect a risk according to local wall thinning of pipes, as a real time test of AE.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.299-304
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• 2008

This paper presents plastic limit loads of piping branch junctions with local wall thinning under combined pressure and in-plane bending, based on systematic three-dimensional finite element limit analyses using elastic-perfectly plastic materials. An ideal branch junction without weld or reinforcement around the intersection is considered with two locations of wall thinning; one in the run pipe, and the other in the branch pipe. Based on FE results, effects of thinning geometries on plastic limit moments are quantified and simple approximations of plastic limit loads are proposed.