Experimental Evaluation on the Thermal Stress Due to Ice Plugging of Tubes in Nuclear Power Plant

Abstract

Ice-plugging of tube in nuclear power plant has been widely used for the purpose of preventing flow of the tube temporarily like a valve. Most common plugging method employs Liquid Nitrogen Gas of . According to the change of tube materials and its dimension, the thermal stress caused from the application of the frozen gas can be varied. In this research, a series of experiments have been carried out to inspect the effect of tube geometry on thermal stresses induced due to ice-plugging. Two typical dimension of stainless and mild steels of 3 and 6 inch diameters were used for the experiments. Each critical spots were checked using strain rosette gages. Another inspection was made on the pressure and temperature of the fluid. It is shown that significant thermal stress level which can cause plastic deformation of failure has not been noticed in this series of experiments.