Flow-induced vibrations of steam generator tubes in nuclear power plants may result in wear damage at support locations. The steam generators in EPR power plants have a design life of 60 years; as wear is an identified ageing damage in steam generators, it is therefore important to collect experimental results on wear of tube and support due to dynamic interactions at EPR secondary side temperature. In this study, wear tests were performed between a steam generator tube (Alloy 690) and two flat opposite anti-vibration bars (AVB in 410s stainless steel) at different impact force levels. Tests were performed in pressurized water at 290°C in wear machines for long term repeated predominant impact motions. The worn surfaces were observed by SEM, the wear coefficients of tube and AVB were evaluated using the work rate approach. Significant scoring, due to the importance of sliding when impacts occur, was shown on wear scar patterns. There were greater wear volumes and depths on tubes than on AVBs, but dynamic forced conditions and rigid mounting of AVB in the rigs have prevailed for finally getting an upper bound of the wear rates. Alloy 690 for tubes and 410s for AVB remain a satisfactory material combination considering comparative wear results with other published data.

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In the ductile-to-brittle transition range of ferritic steels, fracture toughness exhibits a size effect. Up to now, in the safety demonstration of the French Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) integrity, a size effect correction has been considered by the operator to take into account fracture toughness variation of ferritic steels with crack length. The correction consists in increasing the toughness estimated on the RCC-M curve by a factor which depends on a reference length and on the crack length considered. IRSN has already examined the relevance of this correction through statistical analysis of toughness results coming from two ferritic steel databases. To complete its evaluation on French RPV steel, IRSN has supported a large experimental campaign on 16MND5 steel at different temperatures in the ductile-to-brittle transition (from −150°C to −50°C), including tests on various Compact Tension (CT) specimen geometries. Specimens with semi-elliptical crack have been also considered. The results confirm the observations made in its previous study: a size effect exists on mean or median toughness, for the latter more or less in accordance with Beremin theory. Nevertheless, the minimum toughness appears to be independent of the specimen geometry. This indicates that the use of a size effect correction on minimum toughness is not relevant.

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Dynamic loading effects on ferritic steel toughness have been evaluated in the brittle-to-ductile transition, considering loading rates representative of object drops. To verify that the brittle-to-ductile transition curve, initially defined from static tests, tends to shift to higher temperatures due to dynamic effects even in the case of object drops, experiments on 16MND5 steel have been performed.A three-point bending set-up and a thermal chamber have been designed in order to perform dynamic fracture tests on large Single Edge-notched Bending SE(B) specimen, at very low temperature using a drop-shock machine. In a first step, considering that the reference temperature of the material (according to the master curve concept) is -122 °C, dynamic tests at -120 °C have been performed. These tests have confirmed that the fracture mode is still brittle at this temperature, when an impact speed of 4.85 m/s is used.Elastic-plastic or viscoplastic dynamic simulations of the tests, compared to classical static analysis, have demonstrated that the effects of inertia and viscosity on fracture toughness are negligible considering the very low values obtained on these tests at -120 °C. These results also confirm the decrease of fracture toughness due to dynamic loading compared to experimental data from static tests. A further step will be to complete this demonstration with dynamic tests at higher temperatures in the brittle-to-ductile transition. NOMENCLATUREa crack depth B specimen thickness E Young's modulus J non-linear strain energy release rate J C non-linear strain energy release rate value at crack initiation K J elastic plastic stress intensity factor K J = (E.J / (1-²)) 0.5 L specimen length K J stress intensity rate K JC fracture toughness T temperature t time Ux specimen deflection W specimen width  Poisson's ratio