Creep failure of welds in high-temperature power plant steam piping systems is known to be a potential cause of plant failure. Creep behaviour of plain pipes with circumferential welds and cross-weld specimens have received fairly extensive attention. However, research into the creep behaviour of welded thick-walled branched steam pipes has received less attention. Consequently, this thesis addresses improving the understanding of the creep behaviour for this type of geometry. Numerical and analytical methods are used to assess the creep behaviour of typical power plant branched pipe geometries. The effects of various geometric and material parameters on the creep stress and creep life behaviour of the connections are studied. In particular, the effect of the differing creep properties associated with the various material regions of the weld are investigated. The importance of incorporation of weld properties in creep life assessments is thus assessed. Finite element steady-state and continuum damage mechanics creep analyses have been used to identify the relative creep strength of typical connections compared to plain pipes. The work identifies typical creep rupture locations within branched pipe welds and the associated damage accumulation at and around these positions. Various creep life assessment methods/procedures are used in practise: these are mainly the British Standard codes, British Energy's R5 procedure, steady state creep approaches and continuum damage mechanics approaches. The relative accuracy and conservatism of these distinct approaches are addressed for the application to typical branched pipes. The general formulation of steady-state creep stress is applied to the parametric study of weld materials in a typical multi-material welded branched pipe. An approximate interpolation technique for power-law creep is implemented to reduce the number of analyses needed to span a wide range of material parameters. The method is used to estimate the creep stresses and lives at several critical regions within the various material zones of the weld. The advantages of the technique are related to the small number of analyses required and the simple and compact way of presenting the results for weld design and life assessment purposes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:412123 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Rayner, Glen |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11660/ |
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