• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.987-996
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• 2003

The structural integrity of the reactor vessel with the approaching end of life must be assured for pressurized thermal shock. The regulation specifies the screening criteria for this and requires that specific analysis be performed for the reactor vessel which is anticipated to exceed the screening criteria at the end of plant life. In case the screening criteria is exceeded by the deterministic analysis, probabilistic analysis must be performed to show that failure probability Is within the limit. In this study, probabilistic fracture mechanics analysis of the reactor vessel for pressurized thermal shock is performed and the effects of residual stress and master curve on the failure probability are investigated.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.99-107
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• 2000

A probabilistic integrity analysis method is presented for a reactor vessel under pressurized thermal shock(PTS) based on Monte Carlo simulation. This method can be applied to the structural integrity assessment of a reactor vessel subjected to pressurized thermal shock where the coolant temperature transient cannot be expressed explicitly as a time function. An axially or circumferentially oriented infinite length surface crack is assumed to be in the beltline weld region of the rector vessel's inside surface. The random variables are the initial crack depth, neutron fluence on the vessel's inside surface, the copper and nickel content of the vessel materials, R $T_{NDT}$ , $K_{IC}$ , and K/aub la/. The reliability of a sample reactor vessel under PTS is assessed quantitatively and the influence of the amount of neutron fluence is also examined by applying the present method.sent method.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.132-144
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• 2001

Fracture mechanics is one of the major areas of the pressurized thermal shock (PTS) evaluation. To evaluate the reactor pressure vessel integrity associated with PTS, PFM methodology demands precise calculation of temperature, stress, and stress intensity factor for the variety of PTS transients. However, the existence of stainless steel cladding, with different thermal, physical, and mechanical property, at the inner surface of reactor pressure vessel complicates the fracture mechanics analysis. In this paper, treatment schemes to evaluate stress and resulting stress intensity factor for RPV with stainless steel clad are introduced. For a reference transient, the effects of clad thermal conductivity and thermal expansion coefficients on deterministic fracture mechanics analysis are examined.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.153-161
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• 1996

In this paper, theory of fracture mechanics for the pressurized thermal shock is investigated and numerical procedure for the evaluation of the pressure vessel under pressurized thermal shock is developed. For the given material properties, transient history such as temperature and pressure, and postulated flaw, the stress distribution is obtained to calculate stress intensities for a wide range of assumed crack sizes. The stress intensities are compared with the material fracture toughness values corresponding to the chemical compositions and the distribution of the nil ductility transition temperature, to determine the crack growth during the transient. Plant-specific calculations have been performed for several transients and the evaluation results are discussed.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.727-728
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• 2008

The objective of this study is to evaluate the integrity for a reactor pressure vessel under the pressurized thermal shock by applying the probability fracture mechanics. A semi-elliptical axial crack is assumed to be in the beltline region of the reactor pressure vessel. The selected random variables are the neutron fluence on the vessel inside surface, the content of copper, nickel, and phosphorus in the reactor pressure vessel material, and initial RTNDT. The probabilistic integrity analysis was performed using the Monte Carlo simulation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.39-47
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• 2002

Performed here is an assessment study for deterministic fracture mechanics analysis of a pressurized thermal shock(PTS). The PTS event means an event or transient in pressurized water reactors(PWRs) causing severe overcooling(thermal shock) concurrent with or followed by significant pressure in the reactor vessel. The problems consisting of two transients and 10 cracks are solved and maximum stress intensity factors and maximum allowable nil-ductility reference temperatures are calculated. Their results are compared each other to address the general characteristics between transients, crack types and analysis methods. The effects of elastic-plastic material behavior and clad coating on the inner surface are explored.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.441-446
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• 2001

In the integral type reactor, SMART, all the major components such as steam generators, pressurizer and pumps are located inside the single reactor pressure vessel. The objective of this study is to evaluate the structural integrity for RPV of SMART under the postulated pressurized thermal shock by applying the finite element analysis. Input data for the finite element analysis were generated using the commercial code I-DEAS, and the fracture mechanics analysis was performed using the ABAQUS. The crack configurations, the crack aspect ratio and the clad thickness were considered in the parametric study. The effects of these parameters on the reference nil-ductility transition temperature were also investigated.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.40-49
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• 2019

In this paper, failure probabilities of the OPR1000 reactor vessel under pressurized thermal shock (PTS) were estimated using the probabilistic fracture mechanics code, R-PIE. Input variables of initial crack distribution, crack size, copper contents, and upper shelf toughness were selected for the sensitivity analyses. A wide range of the input data were considered. Through-wall cracking frequencies determined by the product of the vessel failure probability and the corresponding occurrence frequency of the transient were also compared to the acceptance criterion. The results showed that transient history had the most significant impact on the vessel failure probability. Moreover, conservative assumptions resulted in extremely high through-wall cracking frequencies.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.257-265
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• 2011

Plant-specific analyses of 5 types of domestic reactors in Korea are performed to assure the structural integrity of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) during transients which are expected to initiate pressurized thermal shock (PTS) events. The failure probability of the RPV due to PTS is obtained by performing probabilistic fracture mechanics analysis. The through-wall cracking frequency is calculated and compared to the acceptance criterion. Considering the fluence at the end of life expected by surveillance test, the sufficient safety margin is expected for the structural integrity of all reactor pressure vessels except for the oldest one during the pressurized thermal shock events. If the flaw with aspect ratio of 1/12 is considered to eliminate the conservatism, the acceptance criteria is not exceeded for all plants until the fluence level of $8{\times}10^{19}\;n/cm^2$, generating sufficient margin beyond the design life.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.153-160
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• 1998

A small break loss of coolant accident is postulated as a pressurized thermal shock accident in this study. From the temperature and pressure histories of coolant, distributions of the temperature and stress in a vessel wall are analytically calculated. The stress intensity factor and fracture toughness of the vessel wall are determined at the crack tip using the ASME code method and they are compared to check if cracking is expected to occur during the transient postulated. The maximum allowable reference nil-ductility transition temperatures are determined for various crack sizes and the results are discussed.