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Fuji Research Institute Corporation, Kanda Nishiki-cho 2-3, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 101-8443 Japan
b
Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, Tokai, Ibaraki-ken, 319-1195 Japan
Received 31 July 2000; revised 20 October 2000; accepted 11 January 2001
Abstract
Probabilistic fracture mechanics, which can evaluate the failure probability considering uncertainties in defect size, material properties,
chemical compositions and non-destructive inspection, is a promising and rational methodology for assessing the reliability and integrity of
structural components. In this paper, a description is given of a new probabilistic fracture mechanics analysis code which has been developed
for evaluating the conditional probability of crack initiation and failure of a reactor pressure vessel under transient conditions such as a
pressurized thermal shock. In addition, some improvements in the reliability and efciency of probabilistic fracture mechanics analysis are
reported and some results are presented to show their effectiveness. q 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Probabilistic fracture mechanics; Reactor pressure vessel; Pressurized thermal shock; Conditional crack initiation probability; Conditional failure
probability
1. Introduction
Probabilistic Fracture Mechanics (PFM) has been used in
the elds of reliability analysis, life extension assessment
and risk management for important structural components
as a promising and rational evaluation methodology.
Several analysis codes such as VISA-II [1], OCA-P [2],
FAVOR [3] and OPERA [4] have been developed to assess
the integrity of an aged Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV)
subjected to a Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) loading.
Some other codes such as PRAISE [5] and STAR6 [6] have
been developed to calculate the failure probability considering the aged condition allowing for factors such as fatigue
crack growth, stress corrosion crack growth and changes in
mechanical properties. Some benchmarking studies [79]
have been carried out to improve the reliability of PFM
analysis. For example, an NRC/EPRI PTS benchmark
study [8] was carried out in 1992. Eight organizations
from the USA and Japan joined this study. Thirteen cases
of problems and some additional special problems were
given to identify the issues for PFM code. The RPV-PTSICAS (Reactor Pressure Vessel Pressurized Thermal Shock
International Comparative Assessment Study) organized by
PWG3 of OECD/NEA/CSNI [9] was carried out in 1997.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 181-292-82-5290; fax: 181-292-82-5408.
E-mail address: shibata@popsvr.tokai.jaeri.go.jp (K. Shibata).
0308-0161/01/$ - see front matter q 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0308-016 1(01)00019-9
272
2. Outline of PASCAL
Specications
Analysis objects
Crack type
Innite-length surface crack: crack with initial depth distribution, crack with initial xed size
Depth distribution
Aspect ratio distribution
Semi-elliptical surface crack: crack with initial depth distribution and xed initial length, crack
with initial depth distribution and xed initial aspect ratio, crack with distribution of both
depth and aspect ratio, crack with xed initial length and aspect ratio
Marshall(exponential), OCTAVIA and user's dened distribution
Log-normal, exponential and user's dened distribution
Probabilistic simulation
Probabilistic variable
Simulation method
Re-simulation of
deviations
Initial crack size and distribution, chemical compositions, neutron uence, fracture toughness,
RTNDT, crack detect capability in inspection
The importance sampling Monte Carlo method
The stratied sampling Monte Carlo method
Optimum stratied sampling Monte Carlo method as shown in Section 4
Procedures A, B, and C as shown in Section 5
Innite surface crack: the same equations as VISA-II or the equations obtained from FEM
analysis as shown in Section 3
Semi-elliptical surface crack: the equations given by Newman and Raju as shown in Section 3
PV including clad: a convenient method as shown in Section 3
Fracture toughness KIc, KIa and net-section collapse criterion
R6 method (FAC: Option 1,2, Category 1,3)
273
Geometry of RPV
Transient of PTS
Initial crack
Chemical
compositions
(normal
distribution)
RTNDT
Fracture
toughness KIc and
KIa
Evaluation of
neutron uence
274
275
Table 3
The coefcients hij for both circumferential and longitudinal cracks
a/t % 0.70
i0
hij for circumferential
j0
1.1215
j1
1.0727
j2
1.0518
j3
1.0483
i2
i3
crack
0.0209
20.058
20.085
20.228
3.4051
2.5718
2.0896
2.3602
21.828
22.273
22.156
22.982
7.0153
4.1432
3.636
3.43
28.205
24.392
24.693
24.772
i4
i0
i1
i2
i3
i4
i5
0.682
1.2402
1.2458
1.7599
21153
2633.1
2684.7
2515
7692.5
4250.9
4573.2
3452.6
220442
211369
212167
29216
27100
15175
16149
12274
217920
210106
210695
28158
4729.3
2688
2828
2165.3
10.705
5.5223
4.836
4.3333
21154
2611.4
2500.4
2447.7
7534.7
4018.4
3310.4
2969.6
219541
210493
28705
28731
25191
13635
11401
10291
216112
28802
27428
26733
4089.3
2258.7
1926.7
1754.7
!
2
where, j a=t; a is the crack depth, and F0, F1, F2, F3 are
the dimensionless stress intensity factors. The nite
element results for these have been represented in the
form
Fj
5
X
i0
hij j i
Fig. 3. Stress intensity factor solutions for circumferential innite length surface cracks.
276
A2 2 A1 a
t
0:7
3
2
a
a
a
12:1467
21:7800
1 0:7548;
b
b
b
7
A1 20:1056
2
a
a
10:3348
2 0:0281;
b
b
A2 20:6842
3
2
a
a
a
11:8373
21:6786
1 0:7255;
b
b
b
A3 2 A2
0:3
a
2 0:7 ;
t
where
A3 0:12;
277
278
M
X
m1
pm
Nmf
Nm
pi21
fm
;
Pi21
f
10
Fig. 8. A typical example of the optimum sampling procedure (only part of the initial crack plane).
279
280
Fig. 10. The optimized cell division in the aspect ratio direction of the crack.
avoid an abrupt change of width and instability in the simulation, a smoothing process is carried out after the modication of cell width. In the smoothing process, the ratio of the
cell width between two neighboring cells is adjusted from
0.9 to 1.1. This range was determined as the optimum
through several test calculations.
A typical optimized cell division is also shown in Fig. 9,
where the smooth change in cell width can be observed. The
procedure to modify the cell width in the direction of aspect
ratio is the same as that in the crack depth direction, and a
typical cell division in this case is shown in Fig. 10.
After the optimization procedure, the width of every cell
is altered in the directions of both the crack depth and aspect
ratio as well as the weight of every cell. Therefore, unlike
the optimum sampling procedure, the failure probability
obtained in a test simulation is not appropriate to be re-used,
and the test simulation to modify the cell division should not
be carried out multiple times. In PASCAL, the test simulation
is carried out only once. After the cell division is optimized,
the weight for every cell is re-calculated and the failure
probability obtained in the test simulation is not used.
In PASCAL, not only the optimum cell-dividing procedure but also the optimum sampling procedure are adopted
for SMC simulation based on an incremental algorithm. The
rst step of the simulation is the test simulation for optimizing the cell division, and the failure probability obtained in
this step is not used in the following incremental step. From
the second step, the procedure for optimizing the number of
samples is carried out. A small number of samples is used at
each step, and the failure probability for each step is
summed until the given accuracy is achieved. In this way,
both the accuracy and the efciency are improved.
The results obtained by using both the normal SMC and
the optimized SMC are compared in Fig. 11. In this calculation, the analysis conditions of Case A5 given in Ref. [8] are
281
Fig. 11. Analysis results by using optimized SMC and normal SMC.
different intervals of crack propagation. However, procedure C can give stable and conservative results for different
intervals of crack propagation. Therefore, procedure C is
used in PASCAL to solve real problems. The procedures
A and B are also available in PASCAL to compare the
results with some other existing codes.
In PASCAL, a correlation between KIc and KIa is recommended to avoid the possibility of KIc , KIa :
q
12
KIa s KIa CKIc 1 Z 1 2 r2 1 KIamean
where CKIc rKIc 2 KIcmean =s KIc ; r is the correlation
282