Alternative Fatigue Evaluation of Nuclear Piping Designed by ANSI B31.1 Code

Abstract:

Class 1 piping components of a certain old vintage nuclear power plant were designed by ANSI B31.1 code without a detailed fatigue evaluation such as the one required by recent ASME Section III code. These components may undergo fatigue damage when considering the continued operation beyond the design life whilst the inherent fatigue resistances of those may satisfy the corresponding implicit limits. In this paper, the alternative fatigue evaluation has been carried out explicitly for Class 1 piping of old nuclear power plant. At first, four representative nuclear piping systems were selected to check the operational adequacy. After characterization of conservative loading conditions based on design features, a series of finite element analyses have been performed and the cumulative usage factors were calculated to guarantee if the components at each system sustain adequate fatigue resistance. Finally, comparisons were drawn between the implicit fatigue design specifications and alternative explicit fatigue analysis results. Even though there were some exceptions, it was demonstrated that most components satisfied the current explicit fatigue criterion.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volumes 297-300)
• Pages: 1659-1665
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.297-300.1659
• Online since: November 2005
• Authors: Young Jae Park, Yoon Suk Chang, Jae Boong Choi, Young Jin Kim
• Keywords: Explicit Fatigue Analysis, Implicit Fatigue Design, Nuclear Piping, Online Monitoring

References

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DOI: 10.2172/48628