Plastic limit load analysis for steam generator tubes with local wall-thinning

This paper introduces the study of experimental and numerical analysis for plastic limit loads of Inconel 690 steam generators (SG) tubes with local wall-thinning defects. Meanwhile, the effect of the three dimensions of a local wall-thinning defect on the plastic limit load of SG tubes is analyzed. A test facility which can test both burst pressure and plastic limit load of SG tubes was established and SG tubes with 3 typical types of defects were tested by using the facility. A regularization method for local wall-thinning defect is proposed and the finite element method was used to analyze the plastic limit load of SG tubes with defects. Compared with the experimental results of SG tubes with real defects, the calculated values of plastic limit load for SG tubes with regularized defects are conservative. Based on finite element method, the effect of the three dimensions of local wall-thinning defects on plastic limit loads of defected Inconel 690 SG tubes has been got. The studied results show that the defect depth of a local wall-thinning defect is the main factor influencing the plastic limit load of SG tubes, on the other hand, both the longitudinal length and the circumferential length of a defect have effect on the plastic limit load of SG tubes. It is found that in some cases, when the longitudinal length and the circumferential angle of a local wall-thinning defect exceed some extent, the effect of the longitudinal length and the circumferential angle on plastic limit load can be ignored. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.