Bayesian approach for prediction of primary water stress corrosion cracking in Alloy 690 steam generator tubing

Abstract

Alloy 690 tubing has been shown to be highly resistant to primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC). Nevertheless, predicting the failure by PWSCC in Alloy 690 SG tubes is indispensable. In this work, a Bayesian-based statistical approach is proposed to predict the occurrence of failure by PWSCC in Alloy 690 SG tubing. The prior distributions of the model parameters are developed based on the prior knowledge or information regarding the parameters. Since Alloy 690 is a replacement for Alloy 600, the parameter distributions of Alloy 600 tubing are used to gain prior information about the parameters of Alloy 690 tubing. In addition to estimating the model parameters, analysis of tubing reliability is also performed. Since no PWSCC has been observed in Alloy 690 tubing, only right-censored free-failure life of the tubing are available. Apparently the inference is sensitive to the choice of prior distribution when only right-censored data exist. Thus, one must be careful in choosing the prior distributions for the model parameters. It is found that the use of non-informative prior distribution yields unsatisfactory results, and strongly informative prior distribution will greatly influence the inference, especially when it is considerably optimistic relative to the observed data.