• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.30-39
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• 2022

Maintaining structural integrity of major apparatuses in a nuclear power plant, including piping system, is recognized as a critical safety issue. The integrity of piping system is also a critical matter related to the safety of a nuclear power plant. The actual failure mode of a piping system due to a seismic load is the leakage due to a fatigue crack, and the structural damage mechanism is the low-cycle fatigue due to large relative displacement that may cause plastic deformation. In this study, in-plane cyclic loading tests were conducted under various constant amplitudes using specimens composed of steel straight pipes and a steel pipe tee in the piping system of a nuclear power plant. The loading amplitude was increased to consider the relative displacement generated in the piping system under seismic loads, and the test was conducted until leakage, which is the limit state of the steel pipe tee, occurred due to fatigue cracks. The limit state of the steel pipe tee was expressed using a damage model based on the damage index that used the force-displacement relationship. As a result, it was confirmed that the limit state of the steel pipe tee can be quantitatively expressed using the damage index.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.50-58
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• 2013

Various process piping usually carries out high flammable and explosible gas under high pressure and high temperature. Due to frequent change of design and structure it becomes more complicated and compactly located. The safety management level is relatively low since it is considered as simply designed component. In this study a safety assessment procedure is proposed for complicated piping system around a mixing drum in which natural gas and by-product gases were mixed. According to ASME code, pipe stress analysis was conducted for determining design margin at some key locations of the piping. These high stress locations can be used as major inspection points for managing the pipe integrity. Sensitivity analysis with outside temperature of the pipe and support constraint condition. Possible effect of hydroen gas to the pipe steel during the previous use of the by-product gas was also discussed.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.14-25
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• 2018

The combined cycle power plant has a cycle of operating the gas turbine with fuel, such as natural gas, and then producing steam using residual heat. The fuel gas is supplied to the gas turbine at a level of 4 to 5 MPa, $200^{\circ}C$ through a compressor and a heat exchanger. In this study, the risk assessment method considering the piping system stress was carried out for safe operation and soundness of the gas fuel supply piping system. The API 580/581 RBI code, which is well known for its risk assessment techniques, is limited to reflect the effect of piping stress on risk. Therefore, the systematic stress of the pipeline is analyzed by using the piping analysis. For the study, the piping system stress analysis was performed using design data of a gas fuel supply piping of a combined cycle power plant. The result of probability of failure evaluated by the API code is compared to the result of stress ratio by piping analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.58-65
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• 2021

Most pipe-inspection robots have fixed sizes and use a wired cable system. Pipelines are generally composed of various structures, including bent pipes, vertical pipes, branch pipes, and holes, and it is difficult to explore the insides of such modular piping structures. In an offshore plant pipeline, a robot that can pass through the pipe hole in the downward direction or avoid obstacles, such as a measuring instruments, has not been introduced yet. In this study, an inspection robot that can travel through most pipelines in offshore plants is proposed. This robot uses mecanum wheels; upward, downward, and rotary motion; and a novel rotatable mechanism. Moreover, the robot is designed to be compact and lightweight to include additional devices in the middle.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.31-39
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• 2015

Pipe wall-thinning by flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) 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 ultrasonic tests (UTs). Nevertheless, thinning evaluations are not easy because the amount of thickness reduction being measured is often quite small compared to the accuracy of the inspection technique. U.S. Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) had proposed Total Point Method (TPM) as a thinning occurrence evaluation method, which is a very useful method for detecting locally thinned pipes or fittings. However, evaluation engineers have to discern manually the measurement data because there are no numerical algorithm for TPM. In this study, numerical algorithms were developed based on non-parametric and parametric statistical method.

• 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 Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.129-135
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• 2018

For efficiently safety management of city gas pipelines, the City-gas Pipeline Management System(CPMS) has been developed to systematically manage and analyze the data collected from 33 city gas companies and to effectively perform internal and external affairs related to gas safety management. The piping information data uploaded to the CPMS is ranked the risk according to the criteria specified in the KGS Code, and the safety management of the piping has performed close inspection according to the risk ranking. However, the criteria for deriving the risk ranking is very simple and lacks relevant grounds, and the reliability for the determination of the close inspection pipeline is no high due to the redundant rank. Therefore, we developed a risk assessment program based on the Reliability Based Design Assessment(RBDA) methodology and tried to derive a reasonable risk ranking by linking it with the CPMS system.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.21-25
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• 2011

Although many defects in PZR heater sleeve have been reported continually from operating experiences in oversea nuclear power plant, utilities get into difficulties in finding appropriate methods for diagnostics of the components due to the limited access or high radiation problems. Recently, as an alternative, diagnostics using Guided Wave Testing(GWT) are proposed and the attention of the methods has been growing gradually because of their long range inspection capability. This study is to investigate the effectiveness of GWT to detect PWSCC in welding points of PZR heater sleeve. Moreover, mode sensitivity analysis of GWT and optimal frequency for the diagnostics of PWSCC are presented by testing the mock-ups specimens that contain artificial flaws.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.22-25
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• 2012

Welding and/or fusion in polyethylene(PE) system made on site is focused on the control of the welding or fusion process to follow proper procedure. The process control is important, but it is not sufficient for the long term reliability of a pipe system. To achieve the rate of failure close to zero, Non Destructive Testing(NDT) is necessary in addition to joining process control. For electrofusion joints several non-destructive testing methods are available. The ultrasonic phased array technique is possible to detect various defects including wire deviations and regions with lack of fusion. In this studies, testing was carried to detect the defect after electrofusion joining of polyethylene piping is utilized by the ultrasonic phased array technique. From testing data, ultrasonic phased array technique is recommended as a reliable non-destructive testing method.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.384-389
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• 2004

As the increase of the operation year of nuclear power plants, the probabilities of the degradation of the major facilities and materials in the nuclear power plants are increased. The integrity of those facilities shall be monitored and verified by the non-destructive examination methods with the regulation codes, so called inservice inspection(ISI). The ISI of Yonggwang unit 6 was performed in four different parts, 1) non-destructive examinations for the components, piping weldments and structures, 2) automated ultrasonic examinations for pressure vessels, 3) visual examinations for the interior structures of the reactor, 4) eddy current examinations for the steam generator tubes. As the results, there was no severe indication and all detected indications were evaluated as non-relavent. Especially for the examinations of the piping weldments, PD(Performance Demonstration) was applied as a W examination method defined in the 1995 edition of ASME Code Sec. XI. The implementation of the PD for the piping weld results in an improvement of the reliability of the UT examinations.