Structural evaluation of a piping system subjected to thermal stratification

Piping systems in nuclear power plants are often designed for pressure, mechanical loads originating from deadweight and seismic events and operating thermal transients using the equations in the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Section III. In the last few decades a number of failures in piping have occurred due to thermal stratification caused by the mixing of hot and cold fluids under certain low flow conditions. Such stratified temperature fluid profiles give rise to circumferential metal temperature gradients through the pipe leading to high stresses causing fatigue damage. A simplified method has been developed in this work to estimate the stresses caused by the circumferential temperature distribution from thermal stratification. It has been proposed that the equation for the peak stress in the ASME Section III piping code include an additional term for thermal stratification.