Failure bending moment of pipes containing multiple circumferential flaws with complex shape

Abstract Flaws due to stress corrosion cracking have been detected in stainless steel or nickel-based alloy dissimilar metal weld joints of piping systems in nuclear power plants. Generally, stainless steel and nickel-based alloy are ductile materials with high toughness, and the failure mode of flawed pipes made of ductile materials is expected to be net-section plastic collapse. Failure bending moment of a ductile pipe containing a circumferential flaw is predicted using the net-section stress approach according to ASME Code Section XI as a limit load criterion. However, in the current code, the failure bending moment can only be adopted for a pipe containing a single circumferential flaw with constant depth, although many flaws detected actually are multiple flaws, and the flaw shapes are generally complex. In this study, a failure estimation method for pipes containing multiple circumferential flaws with complex shapes was proposed. Furthermore, failure experiments were performed for 8-inch diameter Schedule 80 stainless steel pipes containing two circular circumferential flaws. The failure bending moments obtained from the experiments were compared with the estimated results. Based on the experimental results, it was concluded that the proposed failure estimation method satisfactorily represents the failure behavior of the pipes and can be applied in engineering application.