Fluid structure interaction analysis on wall thinned pipes

The wall thinning due to erosion, corrosion and flow accelerated corrosion is one of critical issues in nuclear industry. To secure against loss of integrity of pipes with a flaw, ASME Code Section III and Code Case N-597 etc have been used in design and operating stages, respectively. However, despite of their inherent conservatisms, it may reach unanticipated accidents due to degradation at local region. In this paper, a new evaluation scheme is suggested to estimate load-carrying capacities of wall thinned pipes. At first, computational fluid dynamics analyses employing steady-state and incompressible flow are carried out to determine pressure distributions in accordance with conveying fluid. Then, the discriminate pressures are applied as input condition of structural finite element analyses to calculate local stresses at the deepest point. A series of combined analyses were performed for different fluid flow velocities as well as d/t, R-m/t and l/t ratios. The efficiency of proposed scheme was proven from comparison with conventional analyses results and it is recommended to consider the fluid structure interaction effect for exact integrity evaluation.