• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.49 no.7
• /
• pp.1463-1471
• /
• 2017

In order to monitor the pipe thinning caused by flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) that occurs in coolant piping systems, a shear horizontal ultrasonic pitch-catch waveguide technique was developed for accurate pipe wall thickness monitoring. A clamping device for dry coupling contact between the end of the waveguide and pipe surface was designed and fabricated. A computer program for multi-channel on-line monitoring of the pipe thickness at high temperature was also developed. Both a four-channel buffer rod pulse-echo type and a shear horizontal ultrasonic waveguide type for high-temperature thickness monitoring system were successfully installed to the test section of the FAC proof test facility. The overall measurement error can be estimated as ${\pm}10{\mu}m$ during a cycle from room temperature to $200^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.80-87
• /
• 2014

The pipelines are apt to erosion or corrosion because of the high-speed flow of water and steam with high temperatures or high pressures. This study was carried out a finite element analysis (FEA) and an experimental for the fracture behavior of T-joint pipes with local wall thinning under internal pressure. Local wall thinning was machined on the pipes in order to simulate erosion and corrosion of the metal. The configurations of the eroded area included an eroded ratio of d/t=0.80~0.963 and an eroded length of l=25 mm, 50 mm, and 102 mm. Three-dimensional elastic-plastic analyses were also carried out using FEA, which accurately simulates failure behaviors. In regards to the relationship between pressure and eroded, the criterion that indicates what can be used safely under operating pressure and design pressure were obtained from FEA. The FEA results were in relatively good agreement with that of the experiment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.52 no.4
• /
• pp.784-790
• /
• 2020

The accelerated corrosion by Flow Accelerated Corrosion (FAC) has caused unexpected rupture of piping, hindering the safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs) and sometimes causing personal injury. For the safety, it may be necessary to select some pipes in terms of condition monitoring and to measure the change in thickness of pipes in real time. Direct current potential drop (DCPD) method has advantages in on-line monitoring of pipe wall thinning. However, it has a disadvantage in that it is difficult to quantify thinning due to various thinning shapes and thus there is a limitation in application. The machine learning approach has advantages in that it can be easily applied because the machine can learn the signals of various thinning shapes and can identify the thinning using these. In this paper, finite element analysis (FEA) was performed by applying direct current to a carbon steel pipe and measuring the potential drop. The fundamental machine learning was carried out and the piping thinning model was developed. In this process, the features of DCPD to thinning were proposed.

• Journal of Magnetics
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.57-60
• /
• 2016

Non Destructive Testing (NDT) methods that are capable of detecting the wall thinning and defects through insulation and cladding sheets are necessary. In this study we developed a Pulsed Eddy Current (PEC) system to detect wall thinning of ferro magnetic steel pipes covered with 95 mm thick fiber glass thermal insulator and shielded with aluminum plate of thickness 0.4 mm. In order to confirm the thickness change due to wall thinning, two different sensors, a hall sensor and a search coil sensor were used as a detecting element. In both the cases, the experimental data indicates a considerable change in the detected pulse corresponding to the change in sample thickness. The thickness of the tube was made to change such as 2.5 mm, 5 mm and 8 mm from the inner surface to simulate wall thinning. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) was calculated using window approach and the results were summarized which shows a clear identification of thickness change in the test specimen by comparing the magnitude spectra.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.26 no.5
• /
• pp.321-328
• /
• 2006

In this study, the deformation oi wall thinning elbow is measured and the position of the internal thinning defect is found out by shearography. Shearography is an optical method which has applied to nondestructive testing (NDT) and the strain/stress and deformation analysis. This technique has the merit of the directly measuring the first derivative of displacement with sensitivity which can be adjusted by handling the tilt mirror in the interferometer. In this paper, we tested carbon steel pipe locally wall thinned and loaded internal pressure and the shearography was applied to measure the out-of-plane deformation of wall thinning elbow and to investigate the internal thinning defect of it. From the results, it was confirmed that this technique is proper to the practical application on the pipe line system with internal defect.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.19 no.5 s.66
• /
• pp.65-70
• /
• 2005

Fracture behavior and pipe strength are very important to the integrity of energy plants, ocean structures, and so forth. The pipes of energy plants and ocean structures are subject to local wall thinning, resulting from severe erosion-corrosion damage. Recently, the effects of local wall thinning on fracture strength and fracture behavior of piping systems have been the focus of many studies. In this paper, the elasto-plastic analysis is performed by FE code ANSYS on straight pipes with wall thinning. We evaluated the failure mode, fracture strength and fracture behavior, using FE analysis. Also, the effect of the axial strain on deformations and failure modes was estimated by FE analysis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.40 no.1
• /
• pp.37-48
• /
• 2008

Flow fields inside feeder pipes have been simulated numerically using a CFD (computational fluid dynamics) code to calculate the shear stress distribution, which is the most important factor in predicting the local regions of feeder pipes highly susceptible to FAC (flow-accelerated corrosion)-induced wall thinning. The CFD approach, with schemes used in this study, to simulate the flow situations inside the CANDU feeder pipes has been verified as it showed a good agreement between the investigation results for the failed feedwater pipe at Surry unit 2 plant in the U.S. and the CFD calculation. Sensitivity studies of the three geometrical parameters, such as angle of the first and second bends, length of the first span between the grayloc hub and the first bend, and length of the second span between the first and the second bends have been performed. CFD analysis reveals that the local regions of feeder pipes of Wolsung unit 1 in Korea, on which wall thickness measurements have been performed so far, are not coincident with the worst regions predicted by the present CFD analysis located in the connection region of straight and bend pipe near the inlet part of the bend intrados. Finally, based on the results of the present CFD analysis, a guide to the selection of the weakest local positions where the measurement of wall thickness should be performed with higher priority has been provided.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.29 no.10 s.241
• /
• pp.1399-1406
• /
• 2005

Recently authors have proposed a new method to estimate failure strength of a pipe with local wall thinning subject to either internal pressure or global bending. The proposed method was based on the equivalent stress averaged over the minimum ligament in the locally wall thinned region, and the simple scheme to estimate the equivalent stress in the minimum ligament was proposed, based on the reference stress concept. This paper extends the new method to combined internal pressure and global bending. The proposed method is validated against FE results for various geometries of local wall thinning under combined loading. The effect of internal pressure is also investigated in the present study. Comparison of maximum moments, predicted according to the proposed method, with published full-scale pipe test data fur locally wall-thinned pipes under combined internal pressure and global bending, shows good agreement.

• Proceedings of the Korean Magnestics Society Conference
• /
• 2014.05a
• /
• pp.105-105
• /
• 2014

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2001.06d
• /
• pp.807-812
• /
• 2001

This paper represents the wall thinning analysis results for secondary side piping of two types of domestic nuclear power plants based on the DB establishment and F AC analysis study for NPP secondary system piping. CHECWORKS code utilized in this study has been applied world widely to wall thinning analyses for secondary side piping and its reliability has also been proved. The predicted wear rates for several piping systems of a pressurized water reactor NPP are compared with those of a pressurized heavy water reactor NPP and with the measured wear rates. On the basis of comparison results of the predicted and measured wear rates, the analysis results can be effectively applied to the development of a standard thinned pipe management program targeted all domestic nuclear power plants.