In pipes used at energy plants, those had exposed to various degradations such as fatigue, creep and corrosion etc. in-service periods. Of them, sometimes, the local wall thinning may result from severe erosion-corrosion damage. Therefore, fracture be...
In pipes used at energy plants, those had exposed to various degradations such as fatigue, creep and corrosion etc. in-service periods. Of them, sometimes, the local wall thinning may result from severe erosion-corrosion damage. Therefore, fracture behaviors of pipes with local wall thinning are very important for the integrity of nuclear power plant. However, studies on the effects of local wall thinning on strength and fracture behaviors of piping system are rarely.
In this paper, so, the monotonic bending test was performed of full-scale carbon steel pipes with local wall thinning. A monotonic bending load was applied to wall thinned straight pipe specimens by four-point loading at ambient temperature without internal pressure. From the tests, fracture behaviors and plastic collapse strength of locally thinned pipes were manifested systematically. The observed failure modes were divided into four types; ovalization, crack initiation after ovalization, local buckling and crack initiation after local buckling. Also, the strength and the allowable limit of piping system with local wall thinning were evaluated.