Fatigue evaluation on the inside surface of reactor coolant pump casing weld

Metallic fatigue of Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) materials is a generic safety issue for commercial nuclear nuclear power plants. It is very important to obtain the fatigue usage factor for component integrity and life extension. In this paper, fatigue usage was obtained at the inside surface of Kori unit 2, 3 and 4 RCP casing weld, based on the design transient. And it was intended to establish the procedure and the detailed method of fatigue evaluation in accordance with ASME Section III Code. According to this code rule, two methods to determine the stress cycle and the number of cycles could be applied. One method is the superposition of cycles of various design transients and the other is based on the assumption that a stress cycle correspond to only one design transient. Both method showed almost same fatigue usage in the RCP casing weld