Abstract
Laboratory studies on austenitic stainless steels in PWR primary coolant environments have shown that the ASME XI procedures used to assess fatigue crack growth of reactor components may not always be conservative. Recent work has shown that significant environmental enhancement of growth rates can occur in this environment, especially for some long rise time loading cycles. Although enhancements up to eighty times relative to air data have been observed, under some conditions retardation of the enhanced growth rates can also occur, leading to rates close to the ASME XI air line. Several factors appear to influence retardation, including temperature, water flow rate and material composition. The current study addresses the influence of material composition and it is shown that steels of high sulfur content (>0.02%) are much more prone to retardation than low sulfur (
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | 15th International Conference on Environmental Degradation of Materials in Nuclear Power Systems-Water Reactors 2011|Int. Conf. Environ. Degrad. Mater. Nucl. Power Syst.-Water React. |
| Pages | 534-552 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Volume | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 2011 |
| Event | 15th International Conference on Environmental Degradation of Materials in Nuclear Power Systems – Water Reactors - Cheyenne Mountain. N, USA. Duration: 1 Jan 1824 → … |
Conference
| Conference | 15th International Conference on Environmental Degradation of Materials in Nuclear Power Systems – Water Reactors |
|---|---|
| City | Cheyenne Mountain. N, USA. |
| Period | 1/01/24 → … |
Keywords
- Crack growth
- Fatigue
- Stainless steel
- Sulfur