• Tribology and Lubricants
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• 제30권2호
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• pp.124-129
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• 2014

The piping system accounts for a large portion of the machinery structure of a plant, and is considered as a very important mechanical structure for plant safety. Accordingly, it is used in most energy plants in the nuclear, gas, and heavy chemical industries. In particular, the piping system for a nuclear plant is generally complicated and uses the reactor and its cooling system. The piping equipment is exposed to diverse loads such as weight, temperature, pressure, and seismic load from pipes and fluids, and is used to transfer steam, oil, and gas. In ultrasound infrared thermography, which is an active thermography technology, a 15-100 kHz ultrasound wave is applied to the subject, and the resulting heat from the defective parts is measured using a thermography camera. Because this technique can inspect a large area simultaneously and detect defects such as cracks and delamination in real time, it is used to detect defects in the new and renewable energy, car, and aerospace industries, and recently, in piping defect detection. In this study, ultrasound infrared thermography is used to detect information for the diagnosis of nuclear equipment and structures. Test specimens are prepared with piping materials for nuclear plants, and the optimally designed ultrasound horn and ultrasound vibration system is used to determine damages on nuclear plant piping and detect defects. Additionally, the detected images are used to improve the reliability of the surface and internal defect detection for nuclear piping materials, and their field applicability and reliability is verified.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제10권1호
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• pp.107-112
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• 2014

The Code of Federal Regulations, Title 10, Part 50, Appendix H requires surveillance program for reactor pressure vessel(RPV) that the peak neutron fluence at the end of the design life of the vessel will exceed $1.0E+17n/cm^2$ (E>1.0MeV). 2D/1D Synthesis method based on DORT 3.1 transport calculation code has been widely used to determine fast neutron(E>1.0MeV) fluence exposure to RPV in the beltline region. RAPTOR-M3G(RApid Parallel Transport Of Radiation-Multiple 3D Geometries) performing full 3D transport calculation was developed by Westinghouse and KRIST(Korea Reactor Integrity Surveillance Technology) and applied for the evaluations of In-Vessel and Ex-Vessel neutron dosimetry. The reaction rates from measurement and calculation were compared and the results show good agreements each other.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제10권1호
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• pp.113-121
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• 2014

In this work, an integrated model including molecular dynamics and chemical rate theory was implemented to calculate the growth of point defect clusters(PDC) and copper-rich precipitates(CRP) which could change the mechanical properties of reactor pressure vessel(RPV) steels in a nuclear power plant. A number of time-dependent differential equations were established and numerically integrated to estimate the evolution of irradiation defects. The calculation showed that the concentration of the vacancies was higher than that of the self-interstitial atoms. The higher concentration of vacancies induced a formation of the CRPs in the later stage. The size of the CRPs was used to estimate the mechanical property changes in RPV steels, as is the same case with the PDCs. The calculation results were compared with the measured values of yield strength change and Charpy V-notch transition temperature shift, which were obtained from the surveillance test data of Korean light water reactors(LWRs). The estimated values were in fair agreement with the experimental results in spite of the uncertainty of the modeling parameters.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제16권1호
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• pp.84-91
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• 2020

The APR1400 reactor stud holes can be stuck due to high temperatures, high pressure, prolonged engagement, and load changes according to pressure changes in the reactor. Threaded surfaces of a stud hole should be cleaned for the sealing of pressure in reactor vessel by removing any foreign materials which may exist in the stud holes. Human workers can access to the stud hole for the cleaning of stud holes manually, but the radiation exposure of human workers is increased. Robot is an effective way to work in hazardous area. So we introduced robot for the cleaning of stud holes. Localization of mobile robots is generally based on odometry, but with increased mileage, position errors can be accumulated. In order to eliminate cumulative error and to ensure stability of its driving, laser sensors and new control algorithm were utilized. The distance between the robot and the wall was measured by laser sensors, and the control algorithm was implemented so as to travel the desired trajectory by using the measured values from sensors. The performance of driving and hole sensing were verified through field application, and mobile robot was confirmed to be applicable to the APR 1400 NPP.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제11권2호
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• pp.20-24
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• 2015

During refueling Outage, In-service inspections(ISIs) for the Nuclear Power Plant components are mandatory requirement in accordance with ASME Code Sec. XI. Especially, in current ultrasonic testing is one of the most important NDT techniques that are used for volumetric examination methods for nuclear power plant components, and accurate sizing of flaw indication by UT is essential to assure the integrity of the components. However, ASME code specifies minimum requirement for vessel examination procedure, and so far many different flaw sizing approaches have been tried to apply. Through the Round Robin Test(RRT), the accuracy of ultrasonic flaw sizing using DAC techniques was measured with the mock-ups simulating typical pressure vessel welds. These mock-ups contain artificially introduced flaws of known size and location. This paper shows experimental comparison data on the accuracy of techniques using such as 6dB drop, 50%DAC, 20%DAC and 20%DAC with beam spread correction, and also shows that diverse DAC techniques can be effectively applied to the assessment of the flaw sizing for pressure vessel welds in the stage of welding and fabrication.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제17권2호
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• pp.75-82
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• 2021

The 3D printing technology is one of the fourth industrial revolution technology that drives innovation in the manufacturing process, and should be applied to nuclear industry for various purposes according to the manufacturing trend change. In nuclear industry, it can be applied to manufacture obsolete items and new designed parts in advanced reactors or small modular reactors (SMRs), replacing the traditional manufacturing technologies. A gate valve body was manufactured, which was obsolete in nuclear power plant, using DED(Directed Energy Deposition) metal 3D printing technology after restoring design characteristics including 3D design drawing by reverse engineering. The 3D printed valve body was assembled with commercial parts such as seat-ring, disk, stem, and actuator for performance test. For the valve assembly, including 3D printed valve body, several tests were performed, including pressure test, end-loading test, and seismic test according to KEPIC MGG and KEPIC MFC. In the pressure test, hydraulic pressure of 391kgf/cm² was applied to 3D printed valve body, and no leak was detected. Also the 3D printed valve assembly was performed well in end-loading and seismic tests.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.34-39
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• 2016

This paper presents a method to quantify R-ratio effect on J-integral under large-amplitude cyclic loading condition. Generally, monotonic tearing resistance curves are used to assess stability of cracked nuclear piping under seismic loading. However, it is well known that fracture toughness decrease at cyclic loading condition, according to R-ratio. For this reason, it is important to quantify the J-R curves under cyclic loading condition. To quantify the R-ratio effect, correction method which was proposed by Tranchand is considered. This method considers crack opening area in order to calculate modified J-integral. This method leads to an increase of fracture toughness. At R=-0.5 case, this method is good agreement with monotonic J-R curves. However, results show that this method has a limit to apply a large R-ratio case.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.66-70
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• 2016

Following the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident, the IAEA has issued a revised version of the Nuclear Safety Standard for beyond design basis earthquake to consider the core meltdown accident. In Korea, relevant laws and regulations were also revised to consider beyond design basis earthquake to nuclear components. In this paper, CAV, an seismic damage factor that determines the restart of nuclear power plant after operating breakdown earthquake, is proposed for extension to the beyond design basis earthquake. For pipings not satisfying the beyond design basis earthquake condition, several evaluation methods are suggested, such as strain-based evaluation methods, simple nonlinear analysis method and cumulative damage evaluation method.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제11권2호
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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.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제11권2호
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• pp.61-67
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• 2015

3D FEM modeling based on 3D CAD data has been performed to evaluate the efficiency of CP system in a real operating nuclear power plant. The results of it successfully produced sophisticated profiles of electrolytic potential and current distributions in the soil of an interested area. This technology is expected to be a breakthrough for detection technology of damages on buried pipes when it comes into combining with a brand of area potential earth current (APEC) and ground penetrated radar (GPR) technologies. 2D current distribution and 2D current vectors on the earth surface from the APEC survey will be used as boundary conditions with exact 3D geometry data resulting in visualization of locations and extents of corrosion damages on the buried pipes in nuclear power plants.