• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.30 no.5 s.248
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• pp.533-542
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• 2006

In order to assess the integrity of pipes with local thinning area, the plastic strain as well as the elastic strain at the root of thinned region are required particularly when fluctuating load is applied to the pipe. For estimating elastic-plastic strain at local wall thinning area in a straight pipe under tensile load, an estimation model with idealized fully circumferential constant depth wall thinning area is proposed. Based on the compatibility and equilibrium equations a nonlinear estimation equation, from which local elastic-plastic strain can be determined as a function of pipe/defect geometry, material and the applied strain was derived. Estimation results are compared with those from detailed elastic-plastic finite element analysis, which shows good agreements. Noting that practical wall thinning in nuclear piping has not only a circular shape but also a finite circumferential length, the proposed solution for the ideal geometry is extended based on two-dimensional and three-dimensional numerical analysis of pipes with circular wall thinning.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.847-852
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• 2009

Feedwater heaters of many nuclear power plants have recently experienced severe wall thinning damange, which will increase as operating time progresses. Several nuclear power plants in Korea have experienced wall thinning damage in the area around the impingement baffle inside feed-water heater installed downstream of the turbine extraction stream line. At that point, the extract steam from the turbine is two phase fluid at high temperature, high pressure, and high speed. Since it flows to reverse direction after impinging the impingement baffle, the shell wall of feedwater heaters may be affected by flow-accelerated corrosion. In this paper, to compare wall thinning range according to change entrance nozzle diameter and position with reference numerical analysis model's wall thinning range, various numerical analysis models applied. In case of changing diameter, four different diameter is applied. And a side of nozzle position, two different position-vertical type and parallel type-is applied. And then this paper describes operation of numerical analysis which is composed similar condition with real feed water heater. In conclusion, this study shows effective design for shall wall thinning by changing nozzle diameter and position.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.820-830
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• 2016

Pipe wall thinning by flow-accelerated corrosion and various types of erosion is a significant and costly damage phenomenon in secondary piping systems of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Most NPPs have management programs to ensure pipe integrity due to wall thinning that includes periodic measurements for pipe wall thicknesses using nondestructive evaluation techniques. Numerous measurements using ultrasonic tests (UTs; one of the nondestructive evaluation technologies) have been performed during scheduled outages in NPPs. Using the thickness measurement data, wall thinning rates of each component are determined conservatively according to several evaluation methods developed by the United States Electric Power Research Institute. However, little is known about the conservativeness or reliability of the evaluation methods because of a lack of understanding of the measurement error. In this study, quantitative models for UT thickness measurement deviations of nuclear pipes and fittings were developed as the first step for establishing an optimized thinning evaluation procedure considering measurement error. In order to understand the characteristics of UT thickness measurement errors of nuclear pipes and fittings, round robin test results, which were obtained by previous researchers under laboratory conditions, were analyzed. Then, based on a large dataset of actual plant data from four NPPs, a quantitative model for UT thickness measurement deviation is proposed for plant conditions.

• 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.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.33-38
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• 2012

The droplet ejection behavior from drop-on-demand printhead are investigated numerically for Newtonian and shear-thinning fluid. The numerical simulation is performed using a volume-of-fluid model. In this study, we compare the printable range in terms of Z number and pinch-off time for Newtonian and shear-thinning fluids. The printability range are found to be 1.08 $$\leq_-$$ Z $$\leq_-$$ 12.9 for Newtonian fluid and 0.8 $$\leq_-$$ Z $$\leq_-$$ 12.9 for shear-thinning fluid. However, air entrainment is observed during merging of primary and satellite droplet within the printability range. The pinch-off time of the shear-thinning fluid is apparently shorter compared to the corresponding Newtonian fluid due to shear-thinning effects and the differences in the pinch-off time is enlarged significantly when the capillary number is larger than 0.5.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.08a
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• pp.128-128
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• 2010

In this study, we investigated the evolution and reduction of the surface roughness during the high-speed chemical dry thinning process of Si wafers. The direct injection of NO gas into the reactor during the supply of F radicals from NF3 remote plasmas was very effective in increasing the Si thinning rate, due to the NO-induced enhancement of the surface reaction, but resulted in the significant roughening of the thinned Si surface. However, the direct addition of Ar and N2 gas, together with NO gas, decreased the root mean square (RMS) surface roughness of the thinned Si wafer significantly. The process regime for the increasing of the thinning rate and concomitant reduction of the surface roughness was extended at higher Ar gas flow rates. In this way, Si wafer thinning rate as high as $20\;{\mu}m/min$ and very smooth surface roughness was obtained and the mechanical damage of silicon wafer was effectively removed. We also measured die fracture strength of thinned Si wafer in order to understand the effect of chemical dry thinning on removal of mechanical damage generated during mechanical grinding. The die fracture strength of the thinned Si wafers was measured using 3-point bending test and compared. The results indicated that chemical dry thinning with reduced surface roughness and removal of mechanical damage increased the die fracture strength of the thinned Si wafer.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.20 no.1 s.69
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• pp.55-61
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of circumferential location of local wall thinning defect on the collapse behavior of an elbow. Thus, the present study conducts three-dimensional finite element analysis on the 90-degree elbow containing a local wall thinning at intrados, crown and extrados of bend region and evaluates the collapse moment of wall thinned elbow under various thinning shapes and loading conditions. Combined internal pressure and bending moment are considered as an applied load. The internal pressure of $0\~20MPa$ and both closing and opening mode bending are employed. The results of analysis show that the reduction in collapse moment of the elbow by local wall thinning is more significant for a defect locating at crown than for a defect locating at intrados or at extrados. Also, the effect of internal pressure on the collapse moment of wall thinned elbow depends on the circumferential location of thinning defect and applied bending mode.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.546-551
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• 2010

The objective of this research is to estimate the crack location and size of a carbon steel pipe by using a laser ultrasound guided wave for the wall thinning evaluation of an elbow. The wall thinning of the carbon steel pipe is one of the most serious problems in nuclear power plants, especially the wall thinning of the carbon steel elbow caused by Flow-Accelerated Corrosion (FAC). Therefore, a non-destructive inspection method of elbow is essential for the nuclear power plants to operate safely. The specimens used in this study were carbon steel elbows, which represented the main elements of real nuclear power plants. The shape of the wall thinning was an oval with a width of 120mm, a length of 80mm, and a depth of 5mm. The L(0,1) and L(0,2) modes variation of the ultrasound guided wave signal is obtained from the response of the laser generation/air-coupled detection ultrasonic hybrid system represent the characteristics of the defect. The trends of these characteristics and signal processing were used to estimate the size and location of wall thinning.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.89-95
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• 2012

U.S. Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has developed CHECWORKS program and applied it to power plant piping lines since some lines were ruptured by flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) in 1978. Nowadays the CHECWORKS program has been used to manage pipe wall thinning phenomena caused by FAC. However, various erosion mechanisms can occur in carbon-steel piping. Most common forms of erosion are cavitation, flashing, liquid droplet impingement erosion (LDIE), and Solid Particle Erosion (SPE). Those erosion mechanisms cause pipe wall thinning, leaking, rupturing, and even result in unplanned shutdowns of utilities. Especially, in two phase condition, LDIE damages a wide scope of plant pipelines. Furthermore, LDIE is the major culprit to cause such as power runback by pipe leaking. This paper describes the methodologies that manage wall thinning and also predict LDIE wall thinning area. For this study, current properties of two-phase condition are investigated and LDIE areas are selected. The areas are checked by B-Scan method to detect the effect of wall thinning phenomena.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.35-43
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• 2005

Feedwater heaters of many nuclear power plants have recently experienced wall thinning damage, which will increase as operating time progresses. As it is judged that the wall thinning damages have generated due to local fluid behavior around the impingement baffle installed in downstream of the high pressure turbine extraction steam line to avoid colliding directly with the tubes, numerical analyses using PHOENICS code were performed for two models with original clogged impingement baffle and modified multi-hole impingement baffle. To identify the relation between wall thinning and fluid behavior, the local velocity components in x-, y-, and z-directions based on the numerical analysis for the model with the clogged impingement baffle were compared with the wall thickness data by ultrasonic test. From the comparison of the numerical analysis results and the wall thickness data, the local velocity component only in the y-direction, and not in the x- and z-direction, was analogous to the wall thinning configuration. From the result of the numerical analysis for the modified impingement baffle to mitigate the shell wall thinning, it was identified that the shell wall thinning may be controlled by the reduction of the local velocity in the y-direction.