Prevention of unacceptable material fatigue considering the coolant. Principles and application

For the construction, design and operation of nuclear systems, structures and components the appropriate technical codes and standards provide material data, detailed stress analysis procedures and a design philosophy which guarantees a reliable behavior of the structural components throughout the specified lifetime. Especially for cyclic stress evaluation the different codes and standards provide different fatigue analyses procedures to be performed considering the various mechanical and thermal loading histories and geometric complexities of the components. For the fatigue design curves used as limiting criteria the influence of different factors like e.g., environment, surface finish and temperature must be taken into consideration in an appropriate way. A general numerical calculation procedure was developed to calculate equivalent stress- and strain ranges, according to different technical codes and standards. The additional implementation of already published environmental correction factors, depending on actual temperature, strain rate and dissolved-oxygen level, allows the practical and fast application of a strain-based approach to evaluate fatigue at varying temperatures and strain rates for specimens and components exposed to coolant environment. Proposed new design curves with and without the incorporation of environmental effects as well as design curves according to current technical codes and standards are considered. The application of this procedure is demonstrated and discussed by the example of a pressurizer nozzle under transient stratification loads, measured by in-service monitoring. (orig.)