During the past 30 years many fatigue tests and fatigue analysis improvements have been developed in France in order to improve Codified Fatigue Rules of RCC-M, RSE-M and RCC-MRx.
This paper will present comments and proposals for development of these rules associated to Gaps and Needs in order to finalize and justify the AFCEN Codes new rules.
Recently 3 new international R&D results confirm possible un-conservative fatigue material data:
- High cycle fatigue in air for stainless steel,
- Environmental effects on fatigue S-N curve for all materials, and in particular stainless steels,
- Fatigue Crack Growth law under PWR environment for stainless steel.
In front of these new results, AFCEN is working on a 1st set of rules based on existing knowledge:
- Air fatigue curve
- PWR Environmental effects
A periodic up-dating of AFCEN proposed rules will be done using French and International R&D programs with a particular attention on harmonization with other Code rules developed in USA, Japan and Germany, in particular.
