Initiation of PWSCC in Nickel Base Alloy 182

To date, welded nickel base alloy 182 used in Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) components have shown a higher susceptibility to Primary Water Stress Corrosion Cracking (PWSCC) during laboratory tests than in power plants. However, an increasing number of cracks reported in American, Swedish and Japanese nuclear power plants on Alloy 182 enlighten the need for a predictive initiation model of PWSCC. Initiation of PWSCC involves several factors such as material, environment and loading history, interacting with each other. Building such a model first requires to focus on these parameters separately, in order to have a better understanding of the involved mechanisms at a local scale in crack initiation. This study focuses on the correlation between EBSD/strain field results to improve the accuracy of the actual initiation model [1] involving local parameters.Copyright © 2013 by ASME