• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.2305-2311
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• 2002

The pressure tube is a major component of the CANDU reactor, which supports nuclear fuel bundle and heavy water coolant. Pressure tubes are installed horizontally inside the reactor and only selected samples are periodically examined during in-service inspection. In this respect, a probabilistic safety assessment method is more appropriate fur the assessment of overall pressure tube safety. The failure behavior of CANDU pressure tubes, however, is governed by delayed hydride cracking which is the major difference from pipings and reactor pressure vessels. Since the delayed hydride cracking has more widely distributed governing parameters, it is impossible to apply a general PFM methodology directly. In this paper, a PFM methodology for the safety assessment of CANDU pressure tubes is introduced by applying Monte Carlo simulation in determining failure probability Initial hydrogen concentration, flaw shape and depth, axial and radial crack growth rate and fracture toughness were considered as probabilistic variables. Parametric study has been done under the base of pressure tube dimension and hydride precipitation temperature in calculating failure probability. Unstable fracture and plastic collapse are used for the failure assessment. The estimated failure probability showed about three-order difference with changing dimensions of pressure tube.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.527-539
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• 2019

In this paper, the fracture characteristics of concrete specimens with different notch depths under three-point flexural loads are studied by finite element and fracture mechanics methods. Firstly, the concrete beams (the size is 700×100×150 mm) with different notch depths (a=30 mm, 45 mm, 60 mm and 75 mm respectively) are tested to study the influence of notch depths on the mechanical properties of concrete. Subsequently, the concrete beams with notch depth of 60 mm are loaded at different loading rates to study the influence of loading rates on the fracture characteristics, and digital image correlation (DIC) is used to monitor the strain nephogram at different loading rates. The test results show that the flexural characteristics of the beams are influenced by notch depths, and the bearing capacity and ductility of the concrete decrease with the increase of notch depths. Moreover, the peak load of concrete beam gradually increases with the increase of loading rate. Then, the fracture energy of the beams is accurately calculated by tail-modeling method and the bilinear softening constitutive model of fracture behavior is determined by using the modified fracture energy. Finally, the bilinear softening constitutive function is embedded into the finite element (FE) model for numerical simulation. Through the comparison of the test results and finite element analysis, the bilinear softening model determined by the tail-modeling method can be used to predict the fracture behavior of concrete beams under different notch depths and loading rates.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.755-767
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• 2020

A significant development has been made on a new fatigue damage model applicable to Gaussian wide band stress response spectra using numerical approximation methods such as data processing, time simulation, and regression analysis. So far, most of the alternative approximate models provide slightly underestimated or overestimated damage results compared with the rain-flow counting distribution. A more reliable approximate model that can minimize the damage differences between exact and approximate solutions is required for the practical design of ships and offshore structures. The present paper provides a detailed description of the development process of a new fatigue damage model. Based on the principle of the Gaussian wide band model, this study aims to develop the best approximate fatigue damage model. To obtain highly accurate damage distributions, this study deals with some prominent research findings, i.e., the moment of rain-flow range distribution MRR(n), the special bandwidth parameter μk, the empirical closed form model consisting of four probability density functions, and the correction factor QC. Sequential prerequisite data processes, such as creation of various stress spectra, extraction of stress time history, and the rain-flow counting stress process, are conducted so that these research findings provide much better results. Through comparison studies, the proposed model shows more reliable and accurate damage distributions, very close to those of the rain-flow counting solution. Several significant achievements and findings obtained from this study are suggested. Further work is needed to apply the new developed model to crack growth prediction under a random stress process in view of the engineering critical assessment of offshore structures. The present developed formulation and procedure also need to be extended to non-Gaussian wide band processes.