Influence of geometry of pipe on flow accelerated corrosion - a study under neutral pH condition

The carbon steel piping material's degradation due to flow accelerated corrosion (FAC) is one of the problems in nuclear power plant. FAC impacts plant operation and maintenance significantly. Wall thinning of structural materials should be predictable based on combined hydrodynamics analyses and experimental corrosion data. Such predictive tools help to take preventive measures before loss of material becomes a serious issue for plant operation. In order to develop predictive tools, data on the effect of various parameters that control FAC are required. As per existing literature, one of the important parameters that affect FAC is piping configuration (Geometry of flow path). Hence, experiments were carried out to assess the role played by the geometry of the piping in the FAC of carbon steel. In this study, experiments were conducted in simulation loop under neutral pH condition while varying the geometry parameter of bend such as bend angle and bend radius. Therefore, pipe specimen holder 15 NB bend with 58 °, 73 ° as bend angle and 4D, 2D bend radius was designed and fabricated. The experiments were carried out in order to quantify the wear rate (wall thickness measurement was by ultrasonic method) with a single phase flow velocity (7 m/s) under neutral pH conditions With the pipe specimen four experiments were conducted under neutral pH condition and at 120 DC. Wall thickness mapping was carried out by ultrasonic thickness gauge using a template before and after the experiment. High wall thickness reduction under neutral water chemistry enables easy measurement by ultrasonic thickness gauge. It was observed from the first two sets (2D 58°, 4D 58°) that the corrosion rate with 4D, 58 ° was 50% less than the corrosion with 2D 58°. Subsequently, another two sets of experiments (2D 73° and 4D 73°) was carried out in SIM loop at 7 m/s under neutral pH conditions for two months. Thus, this method of experiments enables us to understand the geometrical influence. The comparison of all the four set of experiments indicated that minimum corrosion rate (1.3 mm/year) was obtained with 4D 73 geometry. Further, velocity distribution, wall shear stress in the bend geometry were mapped by Computed Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and correlated with the corresponding measured wear rate. Good correlation was obtained between theoretically obtained corrosion rate and the experimental value. (author)