Papers by Keyword: Stress Intensity Factor (SIF)

Abstract: To prevent the potential failure of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV), it is requested to operate RPV according to the pressure-temperature (P-T) limit curve during the heat-up and cool-down process. The procedure to make the P-T limit curve was suggested in the ASME Code but it has been known to be too conservative for some cases. In this paper, the conservatism of the ASME Code Sec. XI, App. G was investigated by performing a series of sensitivity analyses. The effects of six parameters such as crack depth, crack orientation, clad thickness, fracture toughness, cooling rate, and neutron fluence were analyzed. The results of P-T limit curves are compared to one another.

Abstract: The thickness dependency of the temperature image obtained by an infrared thermography was investigated using specimens with three kinds of materials and four kinds of the thickness of the specimen. Only the sum of the principal stresses which is the first invariant of stress tensor is measured, and it is impossible to measure individual stress components directly. Then, the infrared hybrid method was developed to separate individual stress components. Although the form of the contour line of low stress side differs greatly, the distribution form of high stress side was considerably alike. The stress intensity factor of material with low thermal conductivity can be estimated with high accuracy by the infrared hybrid method. On the crack problem, it was elucidated that the influence of thermal conduction is large and an inverse problem analysis is required.

Abstract: Multi-crack problems are deeply involved in rock-like material and rock engineering. In order to study the influences of lateral stress and inclined crack angle on the failure load of the multi-cracked body, uniaxial and biaxial compression fracture tests are conducted on plate specimens with regular distributed multi-cracks. The stress distribution and the stress intensity factors KI and KII for every crack tips of the specimens are calculated by FEM. The experiment revealed that the failure load of the multi-cracked specimens increase obviously with the increase of the lateral pressure σ2 and the inclined crack angle α. And the multi-cracked specimens will hardly initiate propagation under equal biaxial compression. Analyses have been shown that these can be explained by the variation of KII with the σ2 and the α.

Abstract: This study investigated acoustic emission behavior during fatigue crack growth test under constant and variable amplitude loading in 304 stainless steel. To describe the acoustic emission behavior, counts rate(dη/dn) was related with stress intensity factor range (SIFR, ΔK) in log-log plot. As a result of test, the relationship was represented a curve, which forms rise and fall behavior in counts rate as the SIFR increases. AE response to a single overload was sudden drop and slow recovery in counts rate, which was similar to crack growth retardation behavior. Under block loading, counts rate of each loading block was same as that of constant amplitude loading. Overall experimental results indicated that stress intensity factor controls the counts rate (dη/dn) as well as crack growth rate (da/dn) regardless of load range or crack length.