Review of work related to ‘leak-before-break’ assessment

Over recent years the concept of leak-before-break (LBB) has been considered in establishing safety cases for piping particularly for the nuclear industry. The LBB concept is viewed as a more realistic design criterion in the design of high energy fluid piping as compared with the double-ended guillotine break as a design criterion, which gives rise to many problems. The concept of LBB aims at the application of fracture mechanics to demonstrate that pipes are very unlikely to experience sudden, catastrophic break without prior indication of detectable leakage. This report is intended to give a review of LBB research activities that have been or are being conducted throughout the world on the basis of literature published up to 1990. Its introduction deals with the background, approach and limitations of LBB. A review of research work related to LBB gives details of nuclear piping studies carried out in different countries. At the end of the paper, some of the future work proposed to be undertaken in the field is described.

[1]  M. L. Vanderglas.  Experiences using three-dimensional finite element analysis for leak-before-break assessment , 1990 .

[2]  Kunio Hasegawa,et al.  Fracture behavior of cracked type 304 stainless steel pipes under tensile and thermal loadings , 1985 .

[3]  Yukio Takahashi,et al.  Research activities on fracture mechanics for nuclear piping in Japan , 1987 .

[4]  Akram Zahoor,et al.  Evaluation of J-integral estimation scheme for flawed throughwall pipes , 1987 .

[5]  A. Pini,et al.  Fracture behaviour of stainless steel pipes containing circumferential cracks at room temperature and 280°C , 1990 .

[6]  Kunio Hasegawa,et al.  Consideration of allowable flaw size for pressurized pipes , 1985 .

[7]  M. J. Kozluk,et al.  Demonstrating leak-before-break for CANDU heat transport piping , 1988 .

[8]  Kunio Hasegawa,et al.  Stable Growth and Instability of Circumferential Cracks in Type 304 Stainless Steel Pipes Under Tensile Load , 1984 .

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[15]  Ad Bakker,et al.  An analysis of the numerical path dependence of the J-integral , 1983 .

[16]  K. R. Wichman,et al.  Development of USNRC standard review plan 3.6.3 for leak-before-break applications to nuclear power plants , 1990 .

[17]  T. Takahashi,et al.  Leak-before-break experiments on heat-treated Zr-2·5 wt% Nb pressure tubes , 1990 .

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