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Fracture behavior of thin-walled Zircaloy fuel clad tubes of Indian pressurized heavy water reactor

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Abstract

For structural integrity analysis of thin walled tubular components such as fuel claddings used in nuclear reactors, knowledge of valid fracture mechanics parameters are required. As axially-cracked thin tubes possess a non-standard geometry from the point of view of specimen fabrication, there is no direct straight forward way to derive their fracture mechanics parameters with known functions as can be done for standard test methods. In the present work, the J–R curve for an axially cracked fuel pin from Indian 220 MWe pressurized heavy water reactor is derived after experimental and analytical derivation of the required parameters and the results are compared with earlier published data for similar material.

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Abbreviations

a :

Crack length

\({{a}_0^\prime}\) :

Crack length at the start of the test

\({a_{bi}^{\prime}}\) :

Blunting corrected crack size at the ith data point of the load-normalization method

b 0 :

Initial unbroken ligament length of the PLT specimen

A :

Cracked area of the PLT specimen fracture surface

A uc :

Area of the remaining ligament or un-cracked area

A el :

Elastic part of area under the load-displacement curve

A pl :

Plastic part of area under the load-displacement curve

C :

Compliance of the PLT specimens

E :

Young’s modulus

f(a/W):

Geometric shape function for evaluation of stress intensity factor as a function of a/W for a finite PLT specimen

F L :

Limit load of the PLT specimens

J :

J-integral

J 0.2 :

J-integral corresponding to 0.2 mm crack growth

J el :

Elastic part of J-integral

J pl :

Plastic part of J-integral

K I :

Mode-I stress intensity factor

P i :

Load at step ‘i’ of the load-normalization process

P Ni :

Normalized load at step ‘i’

t :

Thickness of the PLT specimens

v i :

Total displacement at step ‘i’

v pli :

Plastic part of displacement at step ‘i’

\({{v}^{\prime}_{Ni}}\) :

Normalized plastic part of displacement at step ‘i’

W :

Width of the PLT test set up = 19 mm

η, γ :

Geometric factors used in evaluation of the plastic part of the J-integral and crack growth correction respectively

ν :

Poisson’s ratio

σ Y :

Flow stress of the material

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical Metallurgy Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, 400085, India

    G. Sanyal

  2. Reactor Safety Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, 400085, India

    M. K. Samal

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  1. G. Sanyal
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  2. M. K. Samal
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Correspondence to G. Sanyal.

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Sanyal, G., Samal, M.K. Fracture behavior of thin-walled Zircaloy fuel clad tubes of Indian pressurized heavy water reactor. Int J Fract 173, 175–188 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10704-012-9678-2

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