NUMERICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A CYLINDER WITH CIRCUMFERENTIAL CRACKS UNDER PRESSURIZED THERMAL-SHOCK

A numerical modelling of pressurised thermal shock (PTS) accidents has been performed. Crack growth and crack arrest are numerically simulat ed using the finite-element method. The analysis is done in two steps. In the first the observed crack growth phenomena has been used as inp ut to compute parameters such as crack mouth opening displacement, J-i ntegral, stress intensity factor, etc. These parameters are compared w ith the experimentally observed values and also with the values obtain ed through numerical investigations by other organisations. Crack grow th and crack arrest behaviour are compared with the triaxiality parame ter of the state of stress at that moment. The observed crack growth p henomena is plotted on an R-6 diagram to assess the importance of the failure assessment diagram in the evaluation of the integrity of the s tructure. Effort has also been directed towards studying crack growth using crack tip opening displacement criteria. In the second step, cra ck growth and arrest conditions have been numerically predicted using the material fracture toughness properties and compared with the exper imentally observed data. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.