An experimental study on the fracture behavior of nuclear piping system with a circumferential crack (1) - estimation of crack behavior in straight piping -

The purpose of this study is to investigate experimentally the effects of both seismic loading and crack length on the fracture behavior of piping system with a circumferential crack in nuclear power plants. The experiments were performed using both large scale piping system facility and 4 points bending test machine under PWR operating conditions. The difference in the load carrying capacities between cracked piping and non-cracked piping was also investigated using the results from experiments and numerical calculations. The results obtained from the experiments and estimation are as follows : (1) The safety margin under seismic loading is larger than those under quasi static loading or simple cyclic loading. (2) There was no significant effect of crack length on fracture behavior of piping system with both a surface crack and a through-wall crack. (3) The load carrying capacity in cracked piping was reduced by factors of 7 to 46 compared to non-cracked piping