• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.33 no.10
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• pp.1151-1157
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• 2009

Nuclear power plants applying for the continued operation over design life are required to address the effects of reactor water environment in fatigue design requirement of the ASME Code. Reactor water environmental effects are generally evaluated by calculating fatigue correction factors on fatigue usage. This paper describes the application for pressurizer surge line of environmental fatigue correction factors and the strain rate impact in the application. From this paper, the environmental fatigue correction factors resulted from the assumption of a step change in temperature are especially compared with those calculated from the data measured during plant startup. As a conclusion of this paper, the design transient conditions applied to the fatigue design may be conservative in case of the environmental fatigue evaluation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.164-169
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• 2018

A detailed fatigue evaluation procedure was developed to mitigate the excessive conservativeness of the conventional environmental fatigue evaluation method for the pressurizer spray line elbow of domestic new nuclear power plants. The pressurizer spray line is made of austenitic stainless steel, which is relatively sensitive to the environmentally assisted fatigue, and has a low degree of design margin in terms of environmentally assisted fatigue due to the thermal stratification phenomenon on the pipe cross section as a whole or locally. In this study, to meet the environmental fatigue design requirements of the pressurizer spray line elbow, the new environmental fatigue evaluation has been performed, which used the ASME Code NB-3200-based detailed fatigue analysis and the environmental fatigue correction factor instead of the existing NB-3600 evaluation method. As a result, the design requirements for environmentally assisted fatigue were met in all parts of the pressurizer spray line elbow including the fatigue weakened zones by thermal stratification.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.83-88
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• 2011

To define the effect of strain rate variation from 0.04% to 0.004%/s on environmental fatigue of CF8M cast stainless steel, which is used as a primary piping material in nuclear power plants, low-cycle fatigue tests were conducted at operating pressure and temperature condition of a pressurized water reactor, 15 MPa and $315^{\circ}C$, respectively. A high-pressure and high-temperature autoclave and cylindrical solid fatigue specimens were used for the strain-controlled low-cycle environmental fatigue tests. It was observed that the fatigue life of CF8M stainless steel is shortened as the strain rate decreases. Due to the effect of test temperature, the fatigue data of NUREG-6909 appears a slightly shorter than that obtained by KEPRI at the same stress amplitude of $1{\times}10^3$ MPa. The environmental fatigue correction factor $F_{en}$'s calculated with inputs of the test data increases with high strain amplitude, while the $F_{en}$'s of NUREG-6909 remain constant regardless of strain amplitude.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.50-56
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• 2010

Fatigue has been known as a major degradation mechanism of ASME class 1 components in nuclear power plants. Fatigue damage could be accelerated by combined interaction of several loads and environmental factors. However, the environmental effect is not explicitly addressed in the ASME S-N curve which is based on air at room temperature. Therefore many studies have been performed to understand the environmental effects on fatigue behavior of materials used in nuclear power plants. As a part of efforts, we performed low cycle fatigue tests under various environmental conditions and analyzed the environmental effects on the fatigue life of SA508 Gr. 1a low alloy steel by comparing with higuchi's model. Test results show that the fatigue life depends on water temperature, dissolved oxygen and strain rate. But strain rate over 0.4%/s has little effect on the fatigue life. To find the cause of different fatigue life with ANL's and higuchi's model, another test performed with different heat numbered and heat treated materials of SA508 Gr. 1a. On a metallurgical point of view, the material with bainite microstructure shows much longer fatigue life than that with ferrite/pearlite microstructure. And the characteristics of crack propagation as different microstructure seem to be the main cause of different fatigue life.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.465-481
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• 2022

This paper presents a comprehensive integrity assessment of welded structural components, including uniform high- and low-cycle fatigue assessment of welded plate joints and fatigue-induced fracture assessment of welded plate joints. This study reports a series of fatigue and fracture tests of welded plate joints under three-point bending. To unify the assessment protocol for high- and low-cycle fatigue of welded plate joints, this study develops a numerical damage assessment framework for both high- and low-cycle fatigue. The calibrated damage material parameters are validated through the smooth coupon specimens. The proposed damage-based fatigue assessment approach describes, with reasonable accuracy, the total fatigue life of welded plate joints under high- and low-cycle fatigue actions. Subsequently, the study performs a tearing assessment on the ductile crack extension of the fatigue-induced crack. The tearing assessment diagram derives from the load-deformation curve of a single-edge notched bend, SE(B) specimen and successfully predicts the load-crack extension relation for the reported welded plate joints during the stable tearing process.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.177-185
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• 2008

Low-cycle environmental fatigue tests of cast austenitic stainless steel CF8M at the condition of fatigue strain rate 0.04%/sec were conducted at the pressure and temperature, 15MPa, $315^{\circ}C$ of a operating pressurized water reactor (PWR). The used test rig was limited to install an extensometer at the gauge length of the cylindrical fatigue specimen inside a small autoclave. So the magnet type LVDT#s were used to measure the fatigue displacement at the specimen shoulders inside the high temperature and high pressure water autoclave. However, the displacement and strain measured at the specimen shoulders is different from the one at the gauge length for the geometry and the cyclic strain hardening effect. Displacement of the fatigue specimen gauge length calculated by FEM (finite element method) used to modify the measured displacement and fatigue life at the shoulders. A series of low cycle fatigue life tests in air and PWR conditions simulating the cyclic strain hardening effect verified that the FEM modified fatigue life was well agreed with the simulating test results. The process and method developed in this study for the environmental fatigue test inside the small sized autoclave would be so useful to produce reliable environmental fatigue curves of CF8M stainless steel in pressurized water reactors.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.686-695
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• 2012

This paper proposes a noncontact thermography technique for fatigue crack evaluation under a cyclic tensile loading. The proposed technique identifies and localizes an invisible fatigue crack without scanning, thus making it possible to instantaneously evaluate an incipient fatigue crack. Based on a thermoelastic theory, a new fatigue crack evaluation algorithm is proposed for the fatigue crack-tip localization. The performance of the proposed algorithm is experimentally validated. To achieve this, the cyclic tensile loading is applied to a dog-bone shape aluminum specimen using a universal testing machine, and the corresponding thermal responses induced by thermoelastic effects are captured by an infrared camera. The test results confirm that the fatigue crack is well identified and localized by comparing with its microscopic images.

• International journal of steel structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1242-1251
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• 2018

Not all loads contribute to fatigue crack propagation in the welded detail of steel bridges when they are subjected to variable amplitude loading. For fatigue assessment, therefore, non-contributing stress cycles should be truncated. However, stress range truncation is not considered during typical fatigue reliability assessment. When applying the first order reliability method, stress range truncation occurs mismatch between the expected number of cycles to failure and the number of cycles obtained at the time of evaluation, because the expected number of cycles only counts the stress cycles that contribute to fatigue crack growth. Herein, we introduce a calibration factor to coordinate the expected number of cycles to failure to the equivalent value which includes both contributing and non-contributing stress cycles. The effectiveness of stress range truncation and the proposed calibration factor was validated via case studies.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.78-83
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• 2004

Environmental fatigue crack propagation of CF8M and CF8A steels used in the domestic PWR were investigated on the simulated PWR condition(Temperature: $316^{\circ}C$, Pressure: 15MPa). The test equipment for environmental fatigue(high temperature-high pressure loop, autoclave, load frame, measurement system) were designed. As-received and 60-year aged specimens were used in the test. To compare with environmental fatigue test, another test was performed in the air condition. The fracture surface of specimens were difficult to verify the fracture modes such as striation, intergranular crack and cleavage and so on. As the ferrite content of CF8M is increased, more particles covered fracture surface were peeled.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.368-371
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• 2008

An extensometer system to measure strain and displacement of cylindrical fatigue specimen in a autoclave of high temperature and high pressure environment has been developed by KEPRI. The extensometer reads the displacement caused by fatigue loads at the target length of the specimen installed inside the autoclave. The performance of the extensometer were tested at 15MPa, $315^{\circ}C$ of a operating pressurized water reactor. Two LVDT's of magnet type were connected to the extensometer and used for converting the fatigue displacement to electronic signal. The device is being used for developing environmental fatigue curve of CF8M cast austenitic stainless steel (CASS) in the test condition of low cycle and low strain. This paper introduces the background and results of the development.