Through the past experiences and developments of the fabrication, inspection, and operation of nuclear power plants, it has been recognized that the Leak-Before-Break (LBB) design concept can be justified in the LWR pressure boundary pipings.
Instead of the postulated Double Ended Guillotine Break (DEGB) philosophy, a revised piping design criterion in which LBB concept is introduced, is recently under preparation in Japan, U. S. A., and European countries. In order to verify the LBB of the LWR pipings, extensive experimental and theoretical works have been conducted in many countries. One of the important subject concerning LBB verification is to establish the procedure to evaluate ductile pipe fracture, as well as the subcritical flaw growth and leakage evaluation.
At Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, a research program to investigate the unstable ductile fracture behavior of LWR piping under bending load has been carried out as a part of the LBB verification researches site 1983. This paper summarizes the results of ductile fracture test conducted at room temperature. 6-inch diameter, sch. 80 pipes of type 304 stainless steel with a through-wall or a part-through crack were tested under bending load at room temperature. The four point bending facility of 400kN maximum load and 750mm maximum stroke respectively, which installed a compliant disk spring device, was used for the pipe tests. Tests were performed under high compliance condition using the spring device or low compliance condition without using the device and the stable or unstable pipe fracture behavior was investigated.
Pipe fracture data were obtained from the test with regard to load-displacement curve, crack extension, net section stress,
J-resistance curve, and so on. Besides, the influence of the compliance on the fracture behavior was examined.
J-resistance curves obtained from the pipe tests were higher than that of the CCT specimen of type 304 stainless steel and that of 6-inch diameter STS42 carbon steel pipe specimen. The maximum load of the through-wall cracked pipes was well predicted by the net section stress approach, while the predicted loads at the crack penetration of the part-through cracked pipes were inaccurate. In the paper are also discussed the validity of the tearing instability criterion and the acceptability of the flawed piping considering LBB.
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