Consideration of welding residual stresses within the fracture mechanics assessment of nuclear components

This paper presents some developments performed by EDF and FRAMATOME with the objective to define criteria for the consideration or not of Welding Residual Stresses within the Fracture Mechanics Assessment of nuclear components. The paper is organised in two parts. In the first part, a literature survey is proposed, showing that major part of available results is at low temperature in the Brittle to Ductile transition where the effect of Welding Residual Stresses is known to be significant. This temperature domain is not relevant for nuclear applications; however, all those results are providing very important recommendations regarding the preparation of new testing. In the second part, a numerical study is proposed for showing the relevance of the local approach for evaluating the impact of Residual Stresses on brittle fracture, and to initiate some criteria for defining the domain where they have a significant effect.