Evaluation of Low-Cycle Fatigue in Simulated PWR Environment

Abstract

For developing fatigue design curve of cast stainless steel that is used in piping material of nuclear power plants, a low-cycle fatigue test rig was built. It is capable of performing tests in pressurized high temperature water environment of PWR. Cylindrical solid fatigue specimens of CF8M were used for the strain-controlled environmental fatigue tests. Fatigue life was measured in terms of the number of cycles with the variation of strain amplitude at 0.04%/s strain rates. The disparity between target length and measured length of specimens was corrected by using finite element method. The corrected test results showed similar fatigue life trend with other previous results.

Strain hardening effect of CF8M stainless steel in the environment fatigue test under pressurized water reactor condition

“…In this study, a low cycle environmental fatigue test rig of Korea Electric Power Research Institute (KEPRI) (Jeong et al, 2004;Jeong, Kim, Song, & Hong, 2006) was used to see characteristics of the cyclic strain hardening effect of CF8M used for reactor coolant system (RCS) piping of a domestic vintage NPP.…”