Random thermal fatigue in fast breeder reactor: a narrow-band spectrum Original Research Article

Thermal fatigue crack growth in a fast breeder reactor is theoretically investigated with the aid of probabilistic fracture mechanics (PFM) under the conditions that (i) the temperature variation is a narrow-band stationary process and (ii) the crack grows owing only to the peak stress variation. First, a statistical property of residual life of the component with single crack is derived in an analytical form with the aid of an extended Markov approximation method, which is an efficient mathematical technique in PFM. Next, discussion is carried out on the generalization of the primitive model to the case with plural cracks, where a stress relaxation factor is introduced to express a stress intensity factor of each crack. Finally, a numerical example is shown to examine the quantitative behavior of the componentʹs residual life, and sensitivity analysis is performed with respect to some model parameters.