• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.05c
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• pp.92-97
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• 1996

The fatigue crack propagation behavior in SA106 Gr.C main steam pipe weld joint was investigated in air environment. Crack growth rate tests were conducted on base metal and weld metal at load ratio of 0.1 and 0.3 and at frequency of 10Hz. The fatigue crack growth rates of the base metal and the weld metal were above the ASME reference line and the fatigue crack propagation rate of the weld metal was higher than those of the base metal. Fatigue crack growth rate increased with increasing the load ratio and the effect of the load ratio was more significant in the weld metal. The post weld heat treatment increased the fatigue crack growth rates of the base metal by reducing compressive residual stress and decreased those of the weld metal by reducing weld defects.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.101-108
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to develop an entrainment model of the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) U-tube Steam Generator (SG) for Main Steam Line Break (MSLB) analyses. Generally, the temperature of the inside containment vessel at MSLB is decreased by introducing the liquid entrainment effect. This effect makes a profit on the aspect of integrity evaluation for Equipment Environmental Qualification (EEQ) in the containment. However, the target plant, Kori unit 1 does not have the entrainment data. Therefore, this study has been performed. RETRAN-3D and LOFTRAN computer programs are used for the model development. There are several parameters that are used for the initial benchmark, such as Combustion Engineerings (CE) experimental data and the RETRAN-3D model which describes the test leg. A sensitivity study is then performed with this model in which the model parameters are varied until the calculated results provide reasonable agreement with the measured results for the entire test set. Finally, a multiplication factor has been obtained from the 95/95 values of the calculated (best-estimate) quality data relative to the measured quality data. With this new methodology, an additional temperature margin of about 40$^{\circ}C$ can be obtained. So, the new methodology is found to have an explicit advantage to EQ analyses.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.110-115
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• 2019

Stationary and rotating blades can be found in a steam turbine generator and the airfoil shapes of these blades can be defined by point data from an aerodynamic design system. The main design process of blades is composed of two steps: first, the blade surface is modeled with the point data; and then, the section data is generated which contains composite curves with line segments and arcs for CAE of the blade. The surface is modeled by a curve-net defined by the point data, which may be extended to obtain the section data to model the blade. This paper presents methods for automating the above-mentioned steps, which have been implemented in the commercial CAD/CAM system, Unigraphics, with API functions written in C-language. Finally, the proposed methods have been applied to model the blade of a steam turbine generator.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.182-188
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• 2016

Significant piping wall thinning caused by Flow-Accelerated Corrosion (FAC) and Erosion-Corrosion (EC) continues to occur, even after the Mihama Power Station unit 3 secondary pipe rupture in 2004, in which workers were seriously injured or died. Nuclear power plants in many countries have experienced FAC and EC-related cases in steam cycle piping systems. Korea has also experienced piping wall thinning cases including thinning in the downstream straight pipe of a check valve in a feedwater pump line, the downstream elbow of a control valve in a feedwater flow control line, and failure of the straight pipe downstream of an orifice in an auxiliary steam return line. Cause analyses were performed by reviewing thickness data using Ultrasonic Techniques (UT) and, Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images for the failed pipe, and numerical simulation results for FAC and EC cases in Korea Nuclear Power Plants. It was concluded that the main cause of wall thinning for the downstream pipe of a check valve is FAC caused by water vortex flow due to the internal flow shape of a check valve, the main cause of wall thinning for the downstream elbow of a control valve is FAC caused by a thickness difference with the upstream pipe, and the main cause of wall thinning for the downstream pipe of an orifice is FAC and EC caused by liquid droplets and vortex flow. In order to investigate more cases, additional analyses were performed with the review of a lot of thickness data for inspected pipes. The results showed that pipe wall thinning was also affected by the operating condition of upstream equipment. Management of FAC and EC based on these cases will focus on the downstream piping of abnormal or unusual operated equipment.

• Special Issue of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• 2011.09a
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• pp.112-116
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• 2011

The noise analysis is usually carried out in the early structure design stage for the main areas in a vessel such as an accommodation, an engine room, HVAC System and etc. If the analysis results are higher than the noise limits based on guideline, appropriate countermeasures are established to reduce noise levels and applied to the vessel. But excessive noise induced the main or auxiliary equipment and high pressure steam system is very difficult to check in the initial design stage, and local noise problems frequently appear in actual vessels. This paper deals with excessive noise of the engine control room on LNG carrier. It includes the cause analysis of excessive noise, the countermeasure, and verification. Also, it proves suitability of the countermeasure through the on-board test.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.103-112
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• 2007

Flood issue for nuclear power plants designed and built in 1970 is extremely severe for main steam header compartment and main feedwater line region of intermediate building and lower floor. A calculation for flood level at the main feedwater line isolation compartment is now performing by hand calculation. But, this methodology is quite conservative assumption. The goal of this study was to develop method to analyze flowrate using the RETRAN-3D computer code, and the developed method was applied to flood level analysis following main feedwater line break. As a result of analysis, flood level was low remarkably.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.42-48
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• 2020

The effect of improving the tensile and J-R fracture toughness properties of SA508 Gr.1a on the LBB margin for the main steam pipe is investigated. The material properties and microstructure images of the existing main steam piping material SA106 Gr.C used in domestic nuclear power plants and the newly selected material SA508 Gr.1a were compared. For each material, LBB margins were calculated and compared through finite element analysis and crack instability evaluation. The LBB margin of the improved SA508 Gr.1a is found to be greatly improved compared to that of the existing SA106 Gr.C and SA508 Gr.1a. This is because of the increased material's strength and J-R fracture toughness compared to the previous materials. In order to analyze the effect of physical property change on the LBB margin, the sensitivity of each LBB margin according to the variation of tensile strength and J-R fracture toughness was analyzed. The effect of the change in tensile strength was found to be greater than that of the change in fracture toughness. Therefore, an increase in strength significantly influenced the improvement of the LBB margin of the improved SA508 Gr.1a.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.18-27
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• 2021

This study aims to develop an improved evaluation technology for assessing CANDU-6 safety. For this purpose, the multiple steam generator tube rupture (mSGTR) followed by an unmitigated station blackout (SBO) in a CANDU-6 plant was selected as a hypothetical event scenario and the analysis model to evaluate the plant responses was envisioned into the MARS-KS input model. The model includes logic models for controlling the pressure and inventory of the primary heat transport system (PHTS) decreasing due to the u-tubes' rupture, as well as the main features of PHTS with a simplified model for the horizontal fuel channels, the secondary heat transport system including the shell side of steam generators, feedwater and main steam line, and moderator system. A steady state condition was successfully achieved to confirm the stable convergence of the key parameters. Until the turbine trip, the fuel channels were adequately cooled by forced circulation of coolant and supply of main feedwater. However, due to the continuous reduction of PHTS pressure and inventory, the reactor and turbine were shut down and the thermal-hydraulic behaviors between intact and broken loops got asymmetric. Furthermore, as the conditions of low-flow coolant and high void fraction in the broken loop persisted, leading to degradation of decay heat removal, it was evaluated that the peak cladding temperature (PCT) exceeded the limit criteria for ensuring nuclear fuel integrity. This study is expected to provide the technical bases to the accident management strategy for transient conditions with multiple events.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.135-140
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• 2016

Piping and equipment are degraded by flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) in nuclear power plants. FAC causes numerous problems and nuclear utilities maintain programs to control FAC. The key parameters influencing FAC are hydrodynamic conditions, water chemistry, and effect of materials. Recently, a nuclear utility has planned slight power uprates in Korea. Operating conditions need to be changed in the secondary system according to power uprates. This study analyzed the effect of wall-thinning caused by power uprates. The change of operation data in the secondary cycle is reviewed, and wall-thinning rates are analyzed in the main lines. As a result, two phase (mixture of water and steam) lines have a greater impact than a water line under power uprate conditions. Also, the quality of steam is the most important factor for FAC in two phase lines.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.582-588
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• 2018

Accident diagnosis is one of the complex tasks for nuclear power plant (NPP) operators. In abnormal or emergency situations, the diagnostic activity of the NPP states is burdensome though necessary. Numerous computer-based methods and operator support systems have been suggested to address this problem. Among them, the recurrent neural network (RNN) has performed well at analyzing time series data. This study proposes an algorithm for accident diagnosis using long short-term memory (LSTM), which is a kind of RNN, which improves the limitation for time reflection. The algorithm consists of preprocessing, the LSTM network, and postprocessing. In the LSTM-based algorithm, preprocessed input variables are calculated to output the accident diagnosis results. The outputs are also postprocessed using softmax to determine the ranking of accident diagnosis results with probabilities. This algorithm was trained using a compact nuclear simulator for several accidents: a loss of coolant accident, a steam generator tube rupture, and a main steam line break. The trained algorithm was also tested to demonstrate the feasibility of diagnosing NPP accidents.