Numerical Analysis of Surface Cracks in Steam Generator Tubes

Structural integrity assessments of steam generator tubes using the FAD methodology

“…On the other hand, methodologies based on fracture mechanics have been proposed for assessing the structural integrity of cracked SGTs. Both linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) and elastic plastic fracture mechanics (EPFM) were considered (Chang et al, 2006;Cizelj et al, 1995;Huh et al, 2006;Majumdar, 1999a;Park et al, 2002;Tonkovic et al, 2005;Wang and Reinhardt, 2003). These analyses can be easily generalized to different loading conditions without the need of additional experimental validation, but have a common disadvantage, i.e., the difficulties associated with the appropriate experimental evaluation of the fracture toughness of SGTs (Bergant et al, 2012).…”

“…Although others authors performing SGTs structural integrity assessment (Chang et al, 2006;Hu et al, 2011;Tonkovic et al, 2005Tonkovic et al, , 2008; Wang and Reinhardt, 2003;Wilam and Cermakova, 1995) have reported fracture toughness values for similar materials, the specific details of their experimental determination were not provided. As this cast some doubts about their strict validity, these values were not considered in the present work.…”