Crack arrest in high cycle thermal fatigue crazing Original Research Article

Thermal crazing in high cycle thermal fatigue due to thermal fluctuation in residual heat removal (RHR) system of some nuclear power plants is explained by crack arrest in the depth due to a decreasing stress intensity factor. This is related to high frequencies of thermal loading. An attempt has been made through a parametric study to acquire some knowledge about the loading, knowing the crack depth. For this purpose, analytical as well as finite element simulations of crack propagation in 2D- and 3D-semi-elliptical cracks have been performed. In periodic loading, bounds for the number of cycles to fatigue life are proposed. Moreover, it is shown that in the absence of mean stress, fatigue damage in RHR may be produced in the macroscopic elastic-plastic regime. Finally, it is shown by FE simulations that for a semi-elliptical crack, a small error on stress intensity factor may result in significant error on crack length at high number of cycles, due to error accumulation cycle by cycle. Moreover in this paper is given the reason as to why shielding effect has not been taken into account in the study of crack arrest in RHR.