Structural Integrity Estimates of Steam Generator Tubes Containing Wear-Type Defects

It is requested that steam generator tubes with defects exceeding 40% of wall thickness in depth should be plugged to sustain all postulated loads with appropriate margin. This critical defect size has been determined based on a concept of plastic instability, however, which is known to be too conservative for some locations and types of defects. The application of this concept may even cause premature retirement of steam generator tubes. In reality, a reliable structural integrity estimation for steam generator tubes containing a defect has received increasing attention. Although several guidelines have been developed and used for assessing defect containing tubes, most of these guidelines are focused on stress corrosion cracking or wall-thinning phenomena. Because some of steam generator tubes fail due to fretting and so on, specific integrity estimation schemes for relevant defects are required. In this paper, more than a hundred three-dimensional finite element analyses of steam generator tubes under internal pressure condition are carried out to simulate the failure behavior of steam generator tubes with specific defect configurations: elliptical wear-type, tapered wedge-type, and flat wear-type defects. After investigating the effect of key parameters such as defect depth, defect length, and wrap or tapered angle on equivalent stress across the ligament thickness, burst pressure estimation equations are proposed in relation to material strengths. Predicted burst pressures agreeded well with the corresponding experimental data, so the proposed equations can be used to assess the structural integrity of steam generator tubes with wear-type defects.