• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.245-253
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• 2004

There has been recent demand for extending the life of age-degraded structures and equipment by such techniques as diagnosis, maintenance, safety assessment, and estimating residual life on iron-making plants and hydraulic, thermal, and nuclear power plants. These techniques take into account comprehensive scenarios that may cause malfunction and structural damage and allow an assessment of risk based on the likely scenarios. In particular the safety assessment and residual life estimation of age-degraded ships and equipment facilities require consideration of various factors such as mechanical and thermal stresses, corrosion, hardness, load variation due to changes of operating condition, crack generation and strength reduction of material by fatigue. In this study, a detail thermal stress analysis, one of useful techniques of safety assessment and maintenance, is performed on a blast furnace by using general FEM code (MSC/NASTRAN).

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.239-246
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• 2009

The Mode I interlaminar fracture toughness of woven fabric carbon/epoxy and glass/epoxy composites for a train carbody was measured and FEM analysis was conducted. The woven fabric epoxy composite manufactured by hand lay-up, has high stiffness and strength, good resistance for impact, fatigue, corrosion and in-plane failure. The DCB(Double Cantilever Beam) specimen made of woven fabric epoxy composite had the size of 180mm $\times$ 25mm $\times$ 5mm and the insert of 65mm. The Mode I interlaminar toughness of specimen was measured according to ASTM 5528-01. The crack propagation behavior of the DCB specimen was simulated using FEA with cohesive elements that model the adhesive layer between woven fabric plies.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.495-501
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• 2019

Recently, research has been carried out into the use of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP), which has good tensile strength and corrosion resistance, as an alternative to rebar. But as of yet, the research into fatigue failure of CFRP is insufficient. In this paper, an analysis was performed of the mechanical behavior and failure patterns of CFRP reinforced concrete beams according to static and cyclic loads, in order to evaluate the safety and validity of CFRP rebar as an alternative material for rebar. The cyclic load ranged from 10 % to 70% of the ultimate load, and was loaded at a speed of 3Hz using a sine wave in the form of a three-point loading method. Through the static load test, the maximum load or stiffness of the beam was found to increase remarkably with the increase of the reinforcement, but the fatigue test showed that the number of repetitions decreased and the amount of deflection increased with the increase of the reinforcement.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.10
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• pp.1249-1254
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• 2012

Pipe inspections conducted in nuclear power plants play an important role in ensuring the structural integrity of pipes. Because considerable manpower and expense is required for pipe inspections, it is very important to determine the optimum inspection period and the level of inspection. In this study, the effects of the period and the inspection quality on the failure probability of pipes are investigated using the P-PIE program, which has been developed to calculate the failure probability of pipes. The pipe data of an internal nuclear power plant is used in the study, and fatigue and stress corrosion crack growth are considered in the analysis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.265-276
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• 2013

Pressure tubes made of Zr-2.5 wt% Nb alloy are important components consisting reactor coolant pressure boundary of a pressurized heavy water reactor, in which unanticipated through-wall cracks and rupture may occur due to a delayed hydride cracking (DHC). The Canadian Standards Association has provided deterministic and probabilistic structural integrity evaluation procedures to protect pressure tubes against DHC. However, intuitive understanding and subsequent assessment of flaw behaviors are still insufficient due to complex degradation mechanisms and diverse influential parameters of DHC compared with those of stress corrosion cracking and fatigue crack growth phenomena. In the present study, a deterministic flaw assessment program was developed and applied for systematic integrity assessment of the pressure tubes. Based on the examination results dealing with effects of flaw shapes, pressure tube dimensional changes, hydrogen concentrations of pressure tubes and plant operation scenarios, a simple and rough method for effective cooldown operation was proposed to minimize DHC risks. The developed deterministic assessment program for pressure tubes can be used to derive further technical bases for probabilistic damage frequency assessment.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.20-24
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• 2015

Steam generator(S/G) tubes in pressurized water reactor (PWR's) are subject to several types of degradation. This degradation includes denting, pitting, intergranular attack(IGA), intergranular stress corrosion cracking(IGSCC), fatigue, fretting and wear. Degradation can be derived from either the primary side(inside) or the secondary side(outside) of the tube. Recent issue for tube degradation in domestic steam generator is the tube end cracking on seal weld region. The seal weld region at the tube end and tube itself is regarded as a pressure boundary between the primary side and the secondary side. One of the Westinghouse Model-F S/G has experienced tube end cracking and its number of plugging approximately becomes to the operating limit up to 5% due to tube end cracking which was reported as SAI/MAI(single/multiple axial indication) or SCI/MCI(Single/multiple circumferential indication) from the results of eddy current testing. Eddy current mock-up test was carried out to determine the origin of cracking whether it is from weld zone area or parent tube. This result was helpful to analyze crack location on ECT data. Correct action on this problem was the installation of tube-end sleeve. Last year, after removing 340 installed plugs from tubes, selected 269 tubes took tube-end sleeve installation. Tube-end sleeve brought pressure boundary from parent tube to installed sleeve tube. Tube-end sleeve has the benefit of reducing outage period and increasing more revenue than replacing S/G. This paper is provided to assist interest parties in effectively understanding this issue.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.285-291
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• 2011

In this study the mechanical performance of the new wave dissipating block is evaluated through experiment and numerical analysis. Also, by selecting adequate reinforcement, the improvement of the structural performance is examined. The reinforcement is designed by predicting the amount of tensile force and the location where the tensile stress develops in the new wave dissipating block through numerical analysis. The new wave dissipating block is reinforced with the ordinary steel bars and the fiber reinforced plastic(FRP) bars which have advantages in ocean environment in terms of corrosion and fatigue. The test result shows that the fracture resistance of the un-reinforced concrete block is 350 kN which is about 6.2 times that of the weight of the block. All the test blocks which are reinforced by either steel of FRP bars show strength capacity of over 900 kN which is the maximum load of the test equipment. Although the single reinforcement with larger-diameter bars has advantage in terms of construction convenience, it is recommended to use multiple number of smaller-diameter bars in order to reduce the crack width.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.159-167
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• 2011

Steel structure construction is currently increasing on account of the many merits of steel structures. Due to numerous environmental factors, many cracks and extensive corrosion occur in steel structures, which cause the deterioration of the performance and life cycle of such structures. Maintenance of steel structures is thus strongly demanded, for safety control. The inspection methods that are currently being used, however, are very limited and can detect only local defects in steel structures. They also take much time to use and incur high maintenance costs. Moreover, such methods cannot be applied to huge steel structures, which men find unapproachable. They also require much time due to the need for periodic checks, and may lead to cost loss. Therefore, the development of a monitoring system that can detect defects in whole structures and can reduce the repair and strengthening costs at an early stage is very much needed. In this study, the generation and propagation of cracks were monitored via the electric-potential-drop method (EPDM).

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.46-51
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• 2015

Stainless steel is a popular structural materials for liquid-hydrogen storage containers and piping components for transporting high-temperature fluids because of its superior material properties such as high strength and high corrosion resistance at elevated temperatures. In general, tungsten inert gas (TIG) arc welding is used for bonding stainless steel. However, it is often reported that the thermal fatigue cracks or initial defects in stainless steel after welding decreases the reliability of the material. The objective of this paper is to clarify the characteristics of ultrasonic guided wave propagation in relation to a change in the initial crack length in the welding zone of stainless steel. For this purpose, three specimens with different artificial defects of 5 mm, 10 mm, and 20 mm in stainless steel welds were prepared. By considering the thickness of s stainless steel pipe, special attention was given to both the L(0,1) mode and L(0,2) mode in this study. It was clearly found that the L(0,2) mode was more sensitive to defects than the L(0,1) mode. Based on the results of the L(0,1) and L(0,2) mode analyses, the magnitude ratio of the two modes was more effective than studying each mode when evaluating defects near the welded zone of stainless steel because of its linear relationship with the length of the artificial defect.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.15-19
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• 2005

Conventional eddy current testing has been used for the detection of the defect-like fatigue crack in the conductive materials, such as aluminum, which uses a sinusoidal signal with very narrow frequency bandwidth, Whereas, the pulsed eddy current method uses a pulse signal with a broad bandwidth. This can allow multi-frequency eddy current testing, and the penetration depth is greater than that of the conventional eddy current testing. In this work, a pulsed eddy current instrument was developed for evaluating the metal loss. The developed instrument was composed of the pulse generator generating the maximum square pulse voltage of 40V, an amplifier controlled up to 52dB, an A/D converter of 16 bit and the sampling frequency of 20 MHz, and an industrial personal computer operated by the Windows program. A pulsed eddy current probe was designed as a pancake type in which the sensing roil was located inside the driving roil. The output signals of the sensing roil increased rapidly wich the step pulse driving voltage かn off, and the latter part of the sensing coil output voltage decreased exponentially with time. The decrement value of the output signals increased as the thickness of the aluminum test piece increased.