SYSTEM STIFFNESS AND RESTRAINT EFFECTS ON CIRCUMFERENTIAL CRACK OPENING DISPLACEMENTS: A ROTATIONAL STIFFNESS APPROACH

摘要

Current crack opening displacement (COD) solutions for leak-before-break (LBB) analyses assume the ends of the cracked pipe, which is subjected to remote bending and internal pressure, are free to rotate. However, in plant piping systems, the pressure induced bending and imposed rotations are restrained, because the ends of the pipe are constrained by the rest of the piping system and other components. Hence, existing evaluation procedures, theoretically overestimate the COD values of a circumferential through-wall crack (TWC) in a piping system. These overestimations comprise one of the uncertainties in an LBB analysis, as it leads to an under-prediction of the leakage-size-crack length of a postulated leaking TWC for a prescribed leakage detection limit in a plant, and thus, results in a non-conservative estimation of the crack stability from an LBB perspective. Historical efforts on the effects of restraint on COD have focused on a restraint distance from the crack to restrain the rotation of the pipe. This study provides a fundamentally different approach in that the underlying theory develops a relationship between the apparent rotational stiffness of a pipe with unrestrained ends and the material modulus as a function of crack length and pipe geometry. Thus, the local system stiffness from a plant structural model can be used to modify the unrestrained value of COD.