• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권9호
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• pp.2119-2129
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• 2020

Flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC), liquid droplet impingement erosion (LDIE), cavitation and flashing can cause continuous wall-thinning in nuclear secondary pipes. In order to prevent pipe rupture events resulting from the wall-thinning, most NPPs (nuclear power plants) implement their management programs, which include periodic thickness inspection using UT (ultrasonic test). Meanwhile, it is well known in field experiences that the thickness measurement errors (or deviations) are often comparable with the amount of thickness reduction. Because of these errors, it is difficult to estimate wall-thinning exactly whether the significant thinning has occurred in the inspected components or not. In the previous study, the authors presented an approximate estimation procedure as the first step for thickness measurement deviations at each inspected component and the statistical & quantitative characteristics of the measurement deviations using plant experience data. In this study, statistical significance was quantified for the current methods used for wall-thinning determination. Also, the authors proposed new estimation procedures for determining local wall-thinning to overcome the weakness of the current methods, in which the proposed procedure is based on analysis of variance (ANOVA) method using subgrouping of measured thinning values at all measurement grids. The new procedures were also quantified for their statistical significance. As the results, it is confirmed that the new methods have better estimation confidence than the methods having used until now.

• Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• 제3권1호
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• pp.63-70
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• 2016

Deep drawing is a forming process in which a blank of sheet metal is radially drawn into a forming die by the mechanical action of a punch and converted to required shape. Deep drawing involves complex material flow conditions and force distributions. Radial drawing stresses and tangential compressive stresses are induced in flange region due to the material retention property. These compressive stresses result in wrinkling phenomenon in flange region. Normally blank holder is applied for restricting wrinkles. Tensile stresses in radial direction initiate thinning in the wall region of cup. The thinning results into cracking or fracture. The finite element method is widely applied worldwide to simulate the deep drawing process. For real-life simulations of deep drawing process an accurate numerical model, as well as an accurate description of material behavior and contact conditions, is necessary. The finite element method is a powerful tool to predict material thinning deformations before prototypes are made. The proposed innovative methodology combines two techniques for prediction and optimization of thinning in automotive sealing cover. Taguchi design of experiments and analysis of variance has been applied to analyze the influencing process parameters on Thinning. Mathematical relations have been developed to correlate input process parameters and Thinning. Optimization problem has been formulated for thinning and Genetic Algorithm has been applied for optimization. Experimental validation of results proves the applicability of newly proposed approach. The optimized component when manufactured is observed to be safe, no thinning or fracture is observed.

• 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.

• 한국소음진동공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국소음진동공학회 2008년도 추계학술대회논문집
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• pp.681-686
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• 2008

In this paper, we estimated the degree of pipe thinning by using two accelerometers. It uses measured velocity of flexural wave traveling along the pipes. If the thickness of the wall decreases because of pipe thinning, flexural stiffness of the pipes decreases and accordingly, traveling velocity of flexural wave decreases. Thus, if we install two vibration sensors outside of the pipes and measures traveling velocity of flexural waves regularly, we can estimate and monitor the degree of pipe thinning quickly. In order to test the method we experimented with pipes, and get the result that group velocity varies according to the degree of pipe thinning. It verified this method can be used to monitor the pipe thinning.

• 한국소음진동공학회논문집
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• 제18권12호
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• pp.1286-1292
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• 2008

In this paper, we estimated the degree of pipe thinning by using two accelerometers. It uses measured velocity of flexural wave traveling along the pipes. If the thickness of the wall decreases because of pipe thinning, flexural stiffness of the pipes decreases and accordingly, traveling velocity of flexural wave decreases. Thus, if we install two vibration sensors outside of the pipes and measures traveling velocity of flexural waves regularly, we can estimate and monitor the degree of pipe thinning quickly. In order to test the method we experimented with pipes, and get the result that group velocity varies according to the degree of pipe thinning. It verified this method can be used to monitor the pipe thinning.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권3호
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• pp.947-957
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• 2023

Curved cylindrical structures such as elbows have a non-uniform thickness distribution due to their fabrication process, and as a result have a number of complex mode shapes, including circumferential and axial nodal patterns. In nuclear power plants, material degradation is induced in pipes by flow accelerated erosion and corrosion, causing the wall thickness of carbon steel elbows to gradually thin. The corresponding frequencies of each mode shape vary according to the wall thinning state. Therefore, the thinning state can be estimated by monitoring the varying modal characteristics of the elbow. This study investigated the varying modal characteristics of artificially thinned carbon steel elbows for each thinning state using numerical simulation and experimental methods (MRIT, Multiple Reference Impact Test). The natural frequencies of specified mode shapes were extracted, and results confirmed they linearly decreased with increasing thinning. In addition, by comparing single FRF (Frequency Response Function) data with the results of MRIT, a concise and cost effective thinning estimation method was suggested.

• 한국소음진동공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국소음진동공학회 2006년도 추계학술대회논문집
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• pp.156-162
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• 2006

Pipe thinning is one of the major issues for the structural fracture of pipes of nuclear power plants. Therefore a method to inspect a large area of piping systems quickly and accurately is needed. In this paper, we proposed the method for monitoring pipe thinning. Our basic idea come from that a group velocity of impact wave is different as wall thickness. If the group velocity is measured, wall thickness can be estimated. To obtain the group velocity, time-frequency analysis is used. This is because an arrival time difference can be measured easily in time-frequency domain rather than time domain. To test the performance of this technique, experiments have been performed for a plate and U type pipe. Results show that the proposed technique is quite powerful in the monitoring pipe thinning.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제18권3호
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• pp.39-45
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• 2003

The failure mode of a pipe due to local wall thinning is increasingly more attention in the nuclear power plant industry. To assess the integrity of locally wall thinned pipe, it is necessary to perform many simulations under various conditions. Because the modeling for locally wall thinned elbow is more complicated than that of straight pipe the efficient modeling method for finite element analysis is necessary. In this study, the more simple efficient modeling method of three-dimensional finite element analysis for locally wall thinned elbow has been suggested and verified. And using the method, the failure mode of local wall thinned elbows that have different thinning lengths and circumferential angles is evaluated. From the results, we concluded that the collapse load of elbows has been decreased by the increase of wall thinning shape factors such as thinning lengths and circumferential angles.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• 제13권2호
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• pp.62-69
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• 2014

A huge number of carbon steel piping components installed in the secondary system of nuclear power plants are exposed to aging mechanisms such as FAC (Flow-Accelerated Corrosion), Cavitation, Flashing, and LDIE (Liquid Droplet Impingement Erosion). Those aging mechanisms can lead to thinning of the piping components. To manage the wall thinning degradation, most of utilities in the world predict the wall thinning rate based on the computational program such as CHECWORKS, COMSY, and BRT-CICERO, evaluate the UT (Ultrasonic Test) data, and determine next inspection timing, repair or replacement, if needed. There are several evaluation methods, such as band, blanket, and strip methods, commonly used for determining the wear of piping components from single UT inspection data. It has been identified that those single UT evaluation methods not only do not consider the manufacturing features of pipes, but also may exclude the data of the most thinned point when determining the representative wear rate of piping components. This paper describes a newly developed single UT evaluation method, E-Cross method, for solving above problems and introduces application examples for several pipes and elbows. It was identified that the E-Cross method using the length and width of UT data excluded the most thinned points appropriate as the single UT evaluation method for thinned piping components.

• 한국정보처리학회논문지
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• 제6권10호
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• pp.2816-2822
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• 1999

In this paper, a fast thinning method for fingerprint image by separating end and bifurcation region is proposed. To detect feature points in automatic fingerprint identification system, thinning of fingerprint is essential. The end and bifurcation regions in ridge line are separated by means of run-length coding, and parallel thinning method is applied to the separated regions. The rest parts except the end and bifurcation regions are processed by connecting center points of each run. The performance of the proposed method has been evaluated by CPU processing time and thinness measurement. By the experimental results, the proposed method is fast and has high thinness value.