Incremental damage formulation and its application to assess stress corrosion crack growth response in steam generator tubings

Recent cracking indications in the roll-transition (RT) zone of steam generator tubes of several pressurized water reactors emphasize the greater need for quantitative assessment of the cracking response, especially for the safe and economic continued operation of the reactors. To help address this need the author recently proposed and examined a strain-rate based incremental damage formulation using the concept of an effective stress. Details of the formulation and its application to the tube cracking phenomenon are presented in this paper