Abstract
Buildings, structures and systems of large scale and high value (e.g. conventional and nuclear power plants, etc.) are designed for a certain, limited service lifetime. If the standards and guidelines of the time are taken into account during the design process, the resulting structures will operate safely in most cases. However, in the course of technical history there were examples of unusual, catastrophic failures of structures, even resulting in human casualties. Although the concept of Structural Integrity first appeared in industrial applications only two-three decades ago, its pertinence has been growing higher ever since. Four nuclear power generation units have been constructed in Hungary, more than 30 years ago. In every unit, VVER-440 V213 type light-water cooled, light-water moderated, pressurized water reactors are in operation. Since the mid-1980s, Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) analyses of Reactor Pressure Vessels (RPV) have been conducted in Hungary, where the concept of structural integrity was the basis of research and development. In the first part of the paper, a short historic overview is given, where the origins of the Structural Integrity concept are presented, and the beginnings of Structural Integrity in Hungary are summarized. In the second part, a new conceptual model of Structural Integrity is introduced. In the third part, a brief description of the VVER-440 V213 type RPV and its surrounding primary system is presented. In the fourth part, a conceptual model developed for PTS Structural Integrity Analyses is explained.
Highlights
Buildings, structures and systems of large scale and high value are designed for a certain, limited service lifetime, taking the standards and guidelines of the era into account
Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) calculations are typical applications of the Structural Integrity concept, as they are concerned with studies of accidents that may occur in the primary circuit of a Nuclear Power Plant, at or above a certain risk level; these calculations are completed in order to prevent the structural failure of an Reactor Pressure Vessels (RPV)
Structural Mechanics analysis is the specific subdivision of Structural Integrity seeking to solve the governing equations of the thermalmechanical problems that describe the phenomenon in the wall of a given RPV
Summary
Structures and systems of large scale and high value (eg. conventional and nuclear power plants, chemical plants, gas and oil processing plants, long-distance energy transfer pipelines, bridges, airplanes, ships, etc.) are designed for a certain, limited (generally 15-30-50 years) service lifetime, taking the standards and guidelines of the era into account. Starting in the late 1970s, they conducted a long-term R&D work that resulted in a program suitable for solving three dimensional thermo-mechanical problems of power plant structures [75,76,77, 79, 92,93,94, 97].
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