• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.62-69
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• 2014

A huge number of carbon steel piping components installed in the secondary system of nuclear power plants are exposed to aging mechanisms such as FAC (Flow-Accelerated Corrosion), Cavitation, Flashing, and LDIE (Liquid Droplet Impingement Erosion). Those aging mechanisms can lead to thinning of the piping components. To manage the wall thinning degradation, most of utilities in the world predict the wall thinning rate based on the computational program such as CHECWORKS, COMSY, and BRT-CICERO, evaluate the UT (Ultrasonic Test) data, and determine next inspection timing, repair or replacement, if needed. There are several evaluation methods, such as band, blanket, and strip methods, commonly used for determining the wear of piping components from single UT inspection data. It has been identified that those single UT evaluation methods not only do not consider the manufacturing features of pipes, but also may exclude the data of the most thinned point when determining the representative wear rate of piping components. This paper describes a newly developed single UT evaluation method, E-Cross method, for solving above problems and introduces application examples for several pipes and elbows. It was identified that the E-Cross method using the length and width of UT data excluded the most thinned points appropriate as the single UT evaluation method for thinned piping components.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.227-232
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• 2013

A number of components installed in the secondary system of nuclear power plants are exposed to aging mechanisms such as FAC (Flow-Accelerated Corrosion), Cavitation, Flashing, and LDIE (Liquid Droplet Impingement Erosion). Those aging mechanisms can lead to thinning of the components. In April 2013, one (1) inch small bore piping branched from the main steam line experienced leakage resulting from wall thinning in a 1,000 MWe Korean PWR nuclear power plant. During the normal operation, extracted steam from the main steam line goes to condenser through the small bore piping. The leak occurred in the downstream of an orifice. A control valve with vertical flow path was placed on in front of the orifice. This paper deals with UT (Ultrasonic Test) thickness data, SEM images, and numerical simulation results in order to analyze the extent of damage and the cause of leakage in the small bore piping. As a result, it is concluded that the main cause of the small bore pipe wall thinning is liquid droplet impingement erosion. Moreover, it is observed that the leak occurred at the reattachment point of the vortex flow in the downstream side of the orifice.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.9
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• pp.2119-2129
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• 2020

Flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC), liquid droplet impingement erosion (LDIE), cavitation and flashing can cause continuous wall-thinning in nuclear secondary pipes. In order to prevent pipe rupture events resulting from the wall-thinning, most NPPs (nuclear power plants) implement their management programs, which include periodic thickness inspection using UT (ultrasonic test). Meanwhile, it is well known in field experiences that the thickness measurement errors (or deviations) are often comparable with the amount of thickness reduction. Because of these errors, it is difficult to estimate wall-thinning exactly whether the significant thinning has occurred in the inspected components or not. In the previous study, the authors presented an approximate estimation procedure as the first step for thickness measurement deviations at each inspected component and the statistical & quantitative characteristics of the measurement deviations using plant experience data. In this study, statistical significance was quantified for the current methods used for wall-thinning determination. Also, the authors proposed new estimation procedures for determining local wall-thinning to overcome the weakness of the current methods, in which the proposed procedure is based on analysis of variance (ANOVA) method using subgrouping of measured thinning values at all measurement grids. The new procedures were also quantified for their statistical significance. As the results, it is confirmed that the new methods have better estimation confidence than the methods having used until now.

• Journal of KSNVE
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.401-409
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• 2001

Passive type mufflers installed on every car haute inherent problem of lowering engine power and fuel efficiency caused by backpressure which is byproduct of complex internal structure. Recent improvements like installing a calve to change exhaust gas path depending on power requirement and rpm have only marginally improved performance. Tremendous amount of recent research works on active exhaust noise control have failed to commercialize because of numerous physical and economical reasons. In this paper, a unique seal-active muffler using difference of transmission paths is presented. In this system exhaust pipe is divided into two and joined again downstream. Exhaust noise is reduced by destructive interference when two-divided noise join again with transmission paths'difference which is half of the wavelength of a main noise frequency. One divided path has a sliding mechanism to change length thereby transmission path length difference is adjusted to entwine rpm change. The proposed system has minimal backpressure and does not need a secondary sound source like a speaker so it can overcome many problems of failed active noise control methods. We have verified proposed system's superior performance by simulation and comparison experiment with passive mufflers.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.278-286
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• 2011

The on-line monitoring for the wall thinning in secondary system has been considered one of main issues for the safety of nuclear power plants. To establish the on-line monitoring technique for the pipe wall thinning, the development of the ultrasonic transducer working in high-temperature is very important. In this investigation, the magnetostrictive transducer is concerned for high temperature condition up to $300^{\circ}C$. The magnetostrictive transducer has many advantages such as high working temperature, durability, cost-effectiveness, and shear waves, most of all. A thin Fe-Co alloy patch whose Curie temperature is over $900^{\circ}C$ was employed as a ferromagnetic material for magnetostriction. Wave transduction experiments in various temperature were carried out and the effect of bias magnets was considered together with the dry coupling performance of the transducer. From experimental results, consequently, it was found that the magnetostrictive transducer works stable even in high temperature up to $300^{\circ}C$ and can be a promising method for the on-line monitoring of the wall thinning in nuclear power plants.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.751-757
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• 2001

An experimental study of impinging jet-flow structure has been carried out for a fully developed single circular jet impingement cooling on a flat plate, and the effect of the wall thickness at nozzle exit edge is investigated. Impinging jet flow structures have been measured by Laser-Doppler Velocimeter to interpret the heat transfer results presented previously by Yoon et al.(sup)(10) The peaks of heat transfer rate are observed near the nozzle edge owing to the radial acceleration of jet flow when the nozzle locates close to the impingement plate. The growth of the velocity fluctuations in the wall jet flow is induced by the vortices which originate in the jet shear layer, and consequently the radial distribution of local Nusselt numbers has a secondary peak at the certain radial position. As a wall of circular pipe nozzle becomes thicker for small nozzle-to-target distance, the entrainment can be inhibited, consequently, the acceleration of wall jet flow is reduced and the heat transfer rate decreases.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2014

The water distribution system should be invariably operated on continuous pattern for 24 hours a day. Occasionally, it is not practically possible to operate for 24 hours due to water shortage or financial constraints. Therefore an intermittent water supply is unavoidable in water shortage area and developing countries. But the intermittent water supply can introduce large pressure forces and rapid fluid accelerations into a water supply network. These disturbances may result in new pipe failure, leakage and secondary contamination. This paper proposed an improvement methodology to prevent the disturbances by intermittent water supply. For the study, the hydraulic variation of intermittent flow in water distribution system was measured and analyzed in the field by comparing with simulation of hydraulic model. Installations of control valves such as, pressure reducing and sustaining and air valves were employed for pressure and flow control. The effectiveness of the methods are presented by comparing hydraulic conditions before and after introducing the proposed solutions.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.900-907
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• 2000

The three-dimensional turbulent flow in curved pipes susceptible to flow-accelerated corrosion has been analyzed numerically to predict the pressure and shear stress distributions on the inner surface of the pipes. The analysis employs the body-fitted non-orthogonal curvilinear coordinate system and a standard $ {\kappa}-{\varepsilon}$ turbulence model with wall function method. The finite volume method is used to discretize the governing equations. The convection term is approximated by a high-resolution and bounded discretization scheme. The cell-centered, non-staggered grid arrangement is adopted and the resulting checkerboard pressure oscillation is prevented by the application of a modified version of momentum interpolation scheme. The SIMPLE algorithm is employed for the pressure and velocity coupling. The numerical calculations have been performed for two curved pipes with different bend angles and curvature radii, and discussions have been made on the distributions of the primary and secondary flow velocities, pressure and shear stress on the inner surface of the pipe to examine applicability of the present analysis method. As the result it is seen that the method is effective to predict the susceptible systems or their local areas where the fluid velocity or local turbulence is so high that the structural integrity can be threatened by wall thinning degradation due to flow-accelerated corrosion.

• Journal of ILASS-Korea
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.178-184
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• 2019

Diesel engines have the advantages of higher thermal efficiency and lower CO2 emissions than gasoline engines, but have the disadvantages that particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions are greater than those of gasoline engines. In particular, nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted from diesel engines generates secondary ultrafine dust (PM2.5) through photochemical reactions in the atmosphere, which is fatal to humans. In order to reduce nitrogen oxides (NOx), pre-treatment systems such as EGR, post-treatment systems such as LNT and Urea SCR have been actively studied. The Urea SCR consists of an injection device injecting urea agent and a catalytic device for reducing nitrogen oxides (NOx). The nitrogen oxide (NOx) reduction performance varies greatly depending on the urea uniformity in the exhaust pipe. In this study, spray characteristics according to the spray hole structure were confirmed, and the influence of spray uniformity on spray characteristics was studied through engine evaluation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.1008-1016
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• 2019

In the SG (steam generator) of PWR (pressurized water reactor) for a nuclear plant, hundreds of U-shaped tubes are used for the heat exchanger system. They interact with primary pressurized cooling water flow, generating flow-induced vibration in the secondary flow region. A simplified U-tube model is proposed in this study to apply for experiment and its counterpart computation. Using the commercial code, ANSYS-CFX, we first verified the Moody chart, comparing the straight pipe theory with the results derived from CFD (computational fluid dynamics) analysis. Considering the virtual mass of fluid, we computed the major modes with the low natural frequencies through the comparison with impact hammer test, and then investigated the effect of pump flow in the frequency domain using FFT (fast Fourier transform) analysis of the experimental data. Using two-way fluid-structure interaction module in the CFD code, we studied the influence on mean flow rate to generate the displacement data. A feasible CFD method has been setup in this research that could be applied potentially in the field of nuclear thermal-hydraulics.