Prediction of leak areas and experimental verification on carbon and stainless steel pipes

Abstract This paper presents a study on the pipe crack opening area which is a task in the frame of the six-years Pipe Test Program that ENEA (Comitato Nazionale per la Ricerca e lo Sviluppo dell' E nergia N ucleare e delle E nergie A lternative) started aiming to address some of the uncertainties related to Leak-Before-Break (LBB) concept. The study focuses on the opening generated in a pipe containing a through wall circumferential crack loaded in pure bending, trying to assess the relative leak area of paramount importance in any evaluation of dynamic effects, i.e. thrust forces and jet impingement, and leak detection systems capability as well. The purpose of this report is to check some available analytical tools against the experimental results obtained on stainless and carbon steel pipes. In particular two different methods are considered, that is: 1. (a) Tada/Paris formula, 2. (b) General Electric Engineering Approach. Calculaion are compared with experimental results from pure bending pipe tests, run at room temperature.