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Microstructure and Fatigue Life of Materials and Components of Nuclear...
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Microstructure and Fatigue Life of Materials and Components of Nuclear Energy

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Mechanical Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2021) | Viewed by 5174

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Frank Walther

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Chair of Materials Test Engineering (WPT), TU Dortmund University, 44227 Dortmund, Germany
Interests: materials science and engineering; high-resolution microstructure and defect analysis; fatigue behavior with temperature and corrosion superposition; metrological material condition monitoring; fracture mechanics evaluation of damage tolerances; process-structure-property-damage interactions; mechanism-based material modeling and simulation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Peter Starke

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Materials Science and Materials Testing, University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, 67659 Kaiserslautern, Germany
Interests: fatigue behavior: low to very high cycle fatigue (LCF-VHCF), characterization of the cyclic deformation behavior by using physical quantities, fatigue life calculation, manufacturing and service influences; materials science; structure analysis: X-ray analysis, micro-hardness indentation, magnetic domain analysis; non-destructive testing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Internationally, the monitoring of nuclear power plants is becoming increasingly proactive, i.e., designed to facilitate the inspection of parts and components during operation. This is made possible by the increasing availability of sensor-based condition monitoring systems for structural health monitoring. The simulation of component behavior in real time enables the development of so-called digital twins for aging and damaged nuclear power plants towards so-called building information modeling.

In order to assess the integrity of components, analyses based on real material data must be adapted to currently changing boundary conditions. Based on this, holistic and strongly revised aging management is required. In particular, deterministic and probabilistic aspects of stresses and material properties that go beyond the structural-mechanical requirements regarding component geometry, surfaces and mechanical interactions must be taken into account.

From the perspective of the current state of the art, the verification of the fatigue strength of pressurized components in nuclear power plants is carried out according to nuclear rules and regulations and includes fatigue data for ferritic and austenitic materials. At present, no destructive or non-destructive testing method has been tested to the extent that it is deemed capable of characterizing the so-called crack-free phase of materials and components and thus the damage development that occurs "in-situ". Woehler (S,N) lines are still one of the most important fundamentals today, and a large number of tests are usually required to determine them. As a possibility for future design concepts, process-oriented lifetime calculation methods are currently being developed and tested; additionally, a wide variety of methods are used to detect phase transformations and damage characteristics on the surface and in the volume in order to provide more information from fewer tests and specimens, respectively.

This Special Issue will provide an overview of the current state of the art and the direction that current developments will take us in the future to make the operation of power plant components safer in the long term.

Prof. Dr. Frank Walther
Prof. Dr. Peter Starke
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • nuclear power plants 
  • loading capability 
  • microstructure and structure analysis 
  • deformation and damage mechanisms 
  • measurement techniques 
  • fatigue lifetime calculation 
  • proactive monitoring

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 7280 KiB  
Article
A Short-Time Approach for Fatigue Life Evaluation of AISI 347 Steel for Nuclear Power Energy Applications
by Tobias Bill, Ruth Acosta, Christian Boller, Kai Donnerbauer, Lukas Lücker, Frank Walther, Klaus Heckmann, Jürgen Sievers, Tim Schopf, Stefan Weihe and Peter Starke
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(23), 11405; https://doi.org/10.3390/app112311405 - 2 Dec 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2005
Abstract
AISI 347 austenitic steel is, as an example, used in nuclear energy piping systems. Piping filled with superheated steam or cooled water is particularly exposed to high stresses, whereupon local material properties in the pipes can change significantly, especially in the case of [...] Read more.
AISI 347 austenitic steel is, as an example, used in nuclear energy piping systems. Piping filled with superheated steam or cooled water is particularly exposed to high stresses, whereupon local material properties in the pipes can change significantly, especially in the case of additional corrosive influences, leading to aging of the material. In the absence of appropriate information, such local material property variations are currently covered rather blanketly by safety factors set during the design of those components. An increase in qualified information could improve the assessment of the condition of such aged components. As part of the collaborative project “Microstructure-based assessment of the maximum service life of core materials and components subjected to corrosion and fatigue (MiBaLeB)”, the short-time procedure, StrainLife, was developed and validated by several fatigue tests. With this procedure, a complete S–N curve of a material can be determined on the basis of three fatigue tests only, which reduces the effort compared to a conventional approach significantly and is thus ideal for assessing the condition of aged material, where the material is often rare, and a cost-effective answer is often very needed. The procedure described is not just limited to traditional parameters, such as stress and strain, considered in destructive testing but rather extends into parameters derived from non-destructive testing, which may allow further insight into what may be happening within a material’s microstructure. To evaluate the non-destructive quantities measured within the StrainLife procedure and to correlate them with the aging process in a material, several fatigue tests were performed on unnotched and notched specimens under cyclic loading at room and elevated temperatures, as well as under various media conditions, such as distilled water and reactor pressure vessel boiling water (BWR) conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microstructure and Fatigue Life of Materials and Components of Nuclear Energy)
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21 pages, 7015 KiB  
Article
Microstructure-Based Lifetime Assessment of Austenitic Steel AISI 347 in View of Fatigue, Environmental Conditions and NDT
by Ruth Acosta, Klaus Heckmann, Jürgen Sievers, Tim Schopf, Tobias Bill, Peter Starke, Kai Donnerbauer, Lukas Lücker, Frank Walther and Christian Boller
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(23), 11214; https://doi.org/10.3390/app112311214 - 25 Nov 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2123
Abstract
The assessment of metallic materials used in power plants’ piping represents a big challenge due to the thermal transients and the environmental conditions to which they are exposed. At present, a lack of information related to degradation mechanisms in structures and materials is [...] Read more.
The assessment of metallic materials used in power plants’ piping represents a big challenge due to the thermal transients and the environmental conditions to which they are exposed. At present, a lack of information related to degradation mechanisms in structures and materials is covered by safety factors in its design, and in some cases, the replacement of components is prescribed after a determined period of time without knowledge of the true degree of degradation. In the collaborative project “Microstructure-based assessment of maximum service life of nuclear materials and components exposed to corrosion and fatigue (MibaLeb)”, a methodology for the assessment of materials’ degradation is being developed, which combines the use of NDT techniques for materials characterization, an optimized fatigue lifetime analysis using short time evaluation procedures (STEPs) and numerical simulations. In this investigation, the AISI 347 (X6CrNiNb18-10) is being analyzed at different conditions in order to validate the methodology. Besides microstructural analysis, tensile and fatigue tests, all to characterize the material, a pressurized hot water pipe exposed to a series of flow conditions will be evaluated in terms of full-scale testing as well as prognostic evaluation, where the latter will be based on the materials’ data generated, which should prognose changes in the material’s condition, specifically in a pre-cracked stage. This paper provides an overview of the program, while the more material’s related aspects are presented in the subsequent paper. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microstructure and Fatigue Life of Materials and Components of Nuclear Energy)
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