Abstract
Under certain conditions, weld alloy 182 has been shown to be prone to environmentally-assisted cracking in light water reactor primary water. Within the European, collaborative project MEACTOS, environmentally-assisted crack initiation was addressed by performing constant elongation rate testing of flat, tapered tensile specimens for four surface finishes (a polished one that serves as a reference, an industrial-milled one, an advanced-machined one and a shot peened one), under both a BWR/NWC (boiling water reactor under normal water chemistry) and a PWR (pressurized water reactor) primary water environment, at various cross-head displacement rates. After testing the critical stress for initiating an environmentally-assisted crack was derived by locating the critical section (the border between areas showing and not showing surface cracking after testing) and calculating the associated local stress. In a first analysis the critical stress was plotted against the nominal strain rate (cross-head displacement rate divided by the length of the tapered gauge section) and an exponential curve was fitted to it; yielding a characteristic critical stress (extrapolation to zero nominal strain rate) and a characteristic nominal strain rate (rendering the nominal strain rate dimensionless under the exponent). In a second analysis an initiation model was fitted to obtain a usage towards EAC initiation of 1 in the experimentally-determined critical cross section. The model is strain rate and stress level dependent. The data and the results of both analyses will be presented and discussed in terms of environmentally-assisted crack initiation.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 20th Iiternational conference on environmental degradation of materials in nuclear power systems-water reactor |
| Publisher | AMPP - Association for Materials Protection and Performance |
| Pages | 1-23 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| State | Accepted/In press - 17 Jul 2022 |
| Event | 2022 - 20th International Conference on Environmental Degradation of Materials in Nuclear Power Systems-Water Reactor - The Viewline Resort, Snowmass Duration: 17 Jul 2022 → 21 Jul 2022 https://envdeg.nace.org/ |
Conference
| Conference | 2022 - 20th International Conference on Environmental Degradation of Materials in Nuclear Power Systems-Water Reactor |
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| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | Snowmass |
| Period | 2022-07-17 → 2022-07-21 |
| Internet address |