Abstract
The integrity assessment to evaluate the safety margin of reactor pressure vessels (RPV) often considers only the crack initiation and excludes the crack propagation analysis. This contribution focuses on crack propagation analysis in RPV steels. The eXtended Finite Element (XFEM) method implemented in ABAQUS is applied to a thick-walled cylindrical specimen with a circumferential crack at the inner surface in order to simulate crack propagation in embrittled RPV subjected to Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS). The thick-walled cylinder considered in this study was tested in the FALSIRE project, which results reported the crack opening displacement (COD) and the crack-arrest cycles occurring during the cooling down process. In order to simulate the cylinder with the XFEM, a reduced three-dimensional finite element (FE) model of a small sector (a slice of the cylinder) is used by applying cyclic symmetry boundary conditions. The COD evolution during the PTS transient is calculated and compared against the experimental COD. In the experiment, the COD shows several initiation-arrest-re-initiation cycles and final arrest. However, the results from the simulation show a smooth continuous increase of the COD indicating a progressive crack growth.
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