International Conference on Computer Aided Engineering (CAE 2007) Department of Mechanical Engineering, I.I.T.

Fatigue life prediction of T-pipe joint with semiMadras elliptical crack

Fatigue life prediction of T-pipe joint with semi elliptical crack

a

Vela Muralia, P. Johansinghb, B. Elamvazhudic Engineering Design Division, Mechanical Dept., College Of Engineering, Anna University. E-mail: velamurali@annauniv.edu. b Scientific officer, IGCAR, Kalpakkam,Chennai. c Post Graduate student, Engineering Design Division, College of engineering, Anna university. E-mail: elamvazhudi_75@yahoo.co.in.

Abstract In the safety assessment of pressure vessels and pipes with surface cracks, it is often necessary to consider fatigue crack propagation and fracture among the possible modes of failure. The stress intensity factor at crack tip is important parameter for estimating fatigue life of the components. In this paper finite element analysis is carried out to obtain the stress intensity factor for the semi elliptical cracked surface component subjected to uniaxial tensile loading for constant R-ratio (ratio of minimum load to maximum load in a cyclic loading) with different a/c crack depth to crack length (crack aspect) ratio and the crack front is assumed to have an elliptical arc shape during the whole propagation.. In this paper modeling done by using conformal mapping technique, because this model is ideal for use with relatively small number of degree of freedom without need for explicitly meshed cracks. From the model crack parameter J-integral values are calculated and using the J, K relation the stress intensity values are obtained. Based on the results the fatigue life of the component is predicted and also it is compared with analytical and experimental results. This result should be useful in predicting crack growth rates and fracture strengths for designing structural components and establishing inspection intervals for pipes. Keywords: surface crack, Fatigue, crack propagation, stress intensity factor, aspect ratio.

1. Introduction Austenitic stainless steel is chosen as the structural material for the components of nuclear fast breeder reactors operating at high temperature. This choice has been made based on good mechanical property, excellent corrosion resistance, good fabricability and adequate weldability. For high temperature components of the forthcoming Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) under construction at IGCAR, nitrogen alloyed low carbon stainless steel designated as 316L (N) SS and 304L (N) SS has been chosen as structural materials. 316(L) SS will be used for components experiencing relatively higher temperature while 304 (L) N SS has been selected for rest of the systems. Various fatigue problems were presented in the literature. i.e. Surface crack in T-joint based on multi-region boundary element method [1], low cycle fatigue behavior of 316L (N) SS base metal, 316 weld metal and 316L(N) weld metal in the temperature range 300 to 873 oK [2], Fatigue crack initiation, fatigue crack growth rate of T-pipe joints with notch in the circumferential direction [3], Stress intensity factors for hallow and deep semi-elliptical surface cracks in plates subjected to tension [4], Surface crack propagation for low alloy steel [5], Life prediction of semielliptical surface crack growth in aluminum alloy under constant amplitude loading [6], Stress intensity factors for circumferential surface cracks in pipes and rods under tension and bending loads [7]. In view of plant life extension efforts of nuclear power plants many investigations are going on to assess the structural integrity of different components, such as the reactor pressure vessel and primary circuit. Cyclic loading causes a large proportion of the defects developing or propagating in components during operation. This loading can be due to mechanical fatigue and also to thermal fatigue. Piping components such as elbows and tees used in primary heat transport systems of the power plants undergo stress fluctuations due to operation and extreme loading conditions. In this investigation an attempt has been made to study the fatigue behavior of butt-welded T-pipe joints.

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Vela Murali, P. Johansingh, B. Elamvazhudi

2. Experimental study 2.1 Specimen

The material of the brace and chord members was stainless steel to standard 316 L (N), which is commonly used in nuclear power plant to transfer the liquid sodium for transfer the heat from one place to another.

Note: All dimensions are in mm Figure.1. Butt-welded T-pipe joint Fig.1. Illustrates a typical T- joint geometry used in the present experiments. The specimen was fabricated by TIG welding with full penetration welds. The welding procedures were the same as for nuclear applications. The brace member was located at the mid section of the chord. The joints were inspected using standard non-destructive testing methods to ensure that no cracks or fabrication weld defects were present. During process, the hot spot produces the most highly stressed region within the structure and is thought to best characterize fatigue in hollow section joints. The hot spot stress is generally occurs at a discontinuity, such as the weld toe, where fatigue crack initiation can be expected to start. 2.2 Fatigue testing machine A 100 kN MTS servo hydraulic machine was used for this study. These test were conducted at the temperature about 550 degree C. for this high temperature an electrically operated two zone vertical split type box furnace having a working chamber of width 220 mm, length of 180 mm and height of 320 mm is used. The entire zone is heated by means of helically wound heating elements and housed in special shaped refractory. The load cell is calibrated once in a year for fatigue testing machine to ensure the load cell readings. To ensure the reading of load cell, the standard load cell is used. By means of this, we can predict the accuracy of load cell; otherwise we can correct the values to get the accuracy. This test was conducted at 20 Hz frequency for the maximum stress of 60 MPa and minimum stress of zero (R-ratio equal to zero during loading and unloading. An automatic crack monitoring system based on Direct Current Potential Drop (DCPD) was used to find the rate of crack propagation as shown in Fig 2. The DCPD reading is linearly varying with crack propagation. From the calibrated readings for the crack growth the corresponding number of load cycles were recorded and it is shown in Fig.3. The test was carried on a specimen for the case when aspect ratio a/c (crack depth to crack length) equal to 1.
3 crack length,a (mm) 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 2.00

2.02

2.04

2.06

2.08

2.10

2.12

DCPD reading(volts)

Fig. 2. Crack Depth (a) Vs DCPD reading

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Fatigue life prediction of T-pipe joint with semi elliptical crack

3 2.5 crack depth a (mm) 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 0.00E+00

2.00E+05

4.00E+05

6.00E+05

8.00E+05

1.00E+06

1.20E+06

No.of Cycles (mm/cycle)

Fig. 3. Crack Depth (a) Vs No. of Cycles (N) 3. Finite element analysis 3.1 Conformal mapping A three-dimensional finite element analysis was used to calculate the Mode-I stress intensity factor variations along the crack front for a surface elliptical crack in the pipe as shown in Fig.4. This model was generated using a conformal transformation [8]. Consider a surface crack in a pipe as shown in Fig.4. A-A section and coordinate system is shown in Fig.5. In order to simplify this problem, an exponential function is used  = f (z) =ez = rei (1)

Fig. 4 Surface crack in a pipe From equation (1), equating the last two terms, we get ez = re Taking log on both the side, z =ln r + ln (e ) z = x*+i y* Equating the equations (3) and (4)

Fig. 5 A-A 80.9 43 - plane

(2) (3) (4)

(5) x* = ln r , y* Equation (4) maps on to the Cartesian coordinate system of x* and y* which is shown in Fig 6 onto the domain indicated in Fig 5. % 0 ,3 0  3 9 0 5,7,2097 . 06:,9 43 41 9 0 0 580 3 9 0 - plane and z- plane is shown in Fig.7 and 8 respectively. From Fig 5 and Fig 6, we have (6) ln (R1-a) = ln R1- a* And along the crack front in the z-plane x* will be (7) x*= ln R1- a*8 3 179

Vela Murali, P. Johansingh, B. Elamvazhudi

Fig. 6 z-plane

Fig. 7 Co47/ 3,90 8 8902 147 8:71,.0 .7,.

   7057080390/ in z-plane

The angle corresponding to the point at the crack tip of crack free surface (referring Fig 5.) will be (8)  . #1 From above Equations (5)-(8), we find that (9) a* = ln ( R1/ (R1-a)) (10) c* = c/R1 x*= ln (R1(1-a/R1)  (11) y*= (c/R1) .48 3 - plane, the equation of the ellipse are expressed in the forms (12) r = ex*= R1(1-a/R1)sin (13) = y*=( c/R1) * cos This transformation is used in conjunction with the technique presented by Peng et al. [8], to calculate the stress intensities around the crack tip.
8 3

3.2 Modelling In ABAQUS, it is difficult to model the curved pipe with semi elliptical crack. The actual component shown in Fig. 9 is mapped into straight end cross section using conformal mapping transformation and

Fig. 9 Half of the T-Pipe joint

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Fig. 10 Equivalent plate with crack

Fatigue life prediction of T-pipe joint with semi elliptical crack the equivalent model is shown in Fig. 10. In this model around the crack front, inner tube and outer tube is created. The inner tube represents the size of plastic zone around the crack tip and the diameter of plastic zone calculated from the Dugdale approach [9]. The outer tube mentions the region, in which we get the contour integral values. 3.3 Modelling Crack Region The mesh design for the crack front region is shown below Fig 11.And around the crack front along with the plastic zone inner solid is meshed with wedge element. The outer tube is meshed with linear hexahedral element. Crack front with Plastic zone K-field Linear Elastic (quarter inner solid) Fracture zone (quarter outer tube)

Fig. 11 Von-Mises stress plot for the crack a= c=1. 3.4 Countor integral results The Contour integral values are obtained for the plate model and these values are equivalent to the pipe model. Each contour provides an evaluation of the contour integral. The number of evaluations possible is the number of such rings of elements. We must specify the number of contours to be used in calculating contour integrals. The results of contour integral for a=1,c=1 are plotted shown in Fig.11. 4. Results and Discussions 4.1 Theoritical analysis Fatigue life is calculated from Paris law, da/dN dc/dN where = C ( K)m = C ( K)m (14) (15)

da = change in crack depth in mm. dc = change in crack length in mm.

 897088 39038 9 1,.947 7,3 0 3 !,-mm^1/2 C & m Fatigue material constants (C=2.091E-15 & m =5.5) same for different a/c values E = Youngs modulus = 2X105 !,  !48843 8 7,9 4   038 9    -6 kg/mm3

8 06:,9 43 .,3 -0 :80/ 94 570/ .9 , 82,

. ,3 0 3 .7,.

/059

. 147 , 82,

3.702039

4.2 Stress Intensity Factor Raju Newmann [4] stress intensity factor solution is used for calculating the K values. The general form of the equation is, ,"  ,9 ,. . (16) K = St 181

Vela Murali, P. Johansingh, B. Elamvazhudi where A useful approximation of Q, is given as (a/c^ Q = 1 + 1.1464 (a/c)1.65 for the function F was taken to be F = [M1 + M2 (a/t) 2 + M3(a/t)4 ] f . g. fw.

(17) (18)

4.3. Comparison of life cycles Total number of cycles for T-pipe joint from an initial crack length to complete failure is found out by the experiment. When the life cycles of the component exceeded 2 million cycles the experiment was stopped and new specimen is taken for testing. Also using SIF obtained from FEA and substituting in Paris law the life cycles are calculated. The life cycle obtained by all the methods are compared in Table 1. From these values it could be noticed that for the case a/c=1, the maximum variation between FEA and experiment values is 21.6% and minimum variation is 4.7% and for the same case between Analytical and FEA is maximum of 31.4% and minimum of 2.6%. For the case a/c=0.8, the deviation between Analytical and FEA values is maximum of 34.4% minimum of 7.3% (Table 2). Similarly for the case a/c=0.6, the deviation is maximum of 34.5% and minimum of 8%. (Table 3) Table 1. Life cycle comparison between Experiment and FEA and Analytical Subjected to uniaxial tensile load for (a/c=1) Crack depth a(mm) 1.25 1.5 1.75 2 2.25 2.5 2.75 Experimental No.of Cycles Analytical No.of Cycles 2.80E+05 3.20E+05 4.25E+05 5.31E+05 6.90E+05 9.10E+05 1.14E+06 FEA No.of Cycles 1.92E+05 2.42E+05 3.40E+05 4.48E+05 6.03E+05 7.82E+05 1.01E+06 %of deviation Between Experimental& FEA 21.6 14 13.2 10 7.3 10 4.7 % of deviation Between Analytical & FEA 31.4 24.3 20 15.6 12.6 14 2.6

2.45E+05 2.85E+05 3.92E+05 4.98E+05 6.51E+05 8.70E+05 1.06E+06

Table 2. Life cycle comparison between Analytical and FEA values. Subjected to uniaxial tensile load for (a/c=0.8) Crack depth a (mm) 1.25 1.5 1.75 2 2.25 2.5 2.75 Analytical No. of Cycles 2.15E+05 2.84E+05 3.76E+05 4.94E+05 6.43E+05 7.97E+05 1.04E+06 FEA No. of Cycles 1.41E+05 2.12E+05 2.98E+05 4.06E+05 5.67E+05 7.16E+05 9.64E+05 % of deviation Between Analytical& FEA 34.4 25.3 20.74 17.8 11.8 10.16 7.3

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Fatigue life prediction of T-pipe joint with semi elliptical crack

Table 3. Life cycle comparison between Analytical and FEA values. Subjected to uniaxial tensile load for (a/c=0.6) Crack depth a (mm) 1.25 1.5 1.75 2 2.25 2.5 2.75
1.20E+06 1.00E+06 No. of Cycles 8.00E+05 FEA 6.00E+05 4.00E+05 2.00E+05 0.00E+00 0 0.5 1 1.5 Crack Depth a(mm) 2 2.5 3 EXP ANALYTICAL

Analytical No. of Cycles 1.65E+05 2.61E+05 3.27E+05 4.41E+05 5.86E+05 7.67E+05 9.49E+05

FEA No. of Cycles 1.08E+05 1.84E+05 2.73E+05 3.76E+05 5.08E+05 6.85E+05 8.73E+05

% of deviation Between Analytical & FEA 34.5 29.5 16.5 14.7 13.3 10.7 8

Fig.12 Comparison of Crack depth Vs No. of Cycles for a/c=1

1.20E+06 1.00E+06 No. of Cycles 8.00E+05 Analytical 6.00E+05 FEA 4.00E+05 2.00E+05 0.00E+00 0 0.5 1 1.5 Crack Depth a(mm) 2 2.5 3

Fig.13 Comparison of Crack depth Vs No. of Cycles for a/c=0.8

1.00E+06 9.00E+05 8.00E+05 No. of Cycles 7.00E+05 6.00E+05 5.00E+05 4.00E+05 3.00E+05 2.00E+05 1.00E+05 0.00E+00 0 0.5 1 1.5 Crack Depth a(mm) 2 2.5 3 ANALYTICAL FEA

Fig.14 Comparison of Crack depth Vs No. of Cycles for a/c=0.6

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Vela Murali, P. Johansingh, B. Elamvazhudi 5. Conclusion In this investigation the linear elastic fracture mechanics approach is adopted for the crack growth analysis of a load carrying butt welded T-pipe joint having crack at the outer surface of the welded material. Finite element analysis and experiment were carried out. From the results the following are the conclusions. Stress Intensity Factor values for butt welded T-pipe joint using Raju and Newmann stress intensity factor equations is to be found out for the various crack shapes. For the crack a=1, c=1 the value is 24.8 MPa- mm along depth and 25.47 MPa- mm along length. Similarly for all the crack shapes, SIF values are calculated. Stress Intensity Factor values calculated by finite element method by creating 24 models with various crack aspect ratio a/c=0.6 to1 (crack depth/ crack length). Fatigue life predictions obtained by the Paris law by using SIF values obtained from FE analysis. These values compared with the Experimental and Analytical results. The deviation between FEA and Experimental values for the case a/c=1 was found i.e. maximum 21.6% and minimum of 4.7% and for the same case the deviation between FEA and Analytical values was found i.e. maximum 31.4% and minimum of 2.6%. For the case a/c=0.8, the deviation between Analytical and FEA values is maximum of 34.4% minimum of 7.3%. Similarly for the case a/c=0.6, the deviation maximum of 34.5% and minimum of 8%. Methodology has been established to calculate the fatigue life from stress intensity factors of various models with different crack length. The continuity of crack propagation is visualized by taking the stress intensity factor for subsequent models created with difference of 0.25mm.The life of the T-pipe joint is found to be high when the crack shape follows a/c=1, comparatively 5.7% with a/c=0.8 and 13.56% with a/c=0.6.

References
[1] Zhihai Xiang, Seng Tjhen Lie, Bo Wang, Zhanghi Cen, A simulation of fatigue crack propagation in welded Tjoint using 3D Boundary element method, International J. of pressure vessels, Vol. 80, pp. 111-120. (2003) [2] S.L.Mannan and M.Valsan, Low Cycle Fatigue Behavior of 316L (N) SS weld metal, Trans.Indian institute, Vol. 3, pp. 141-153. (June 2000) [3] P.K.Singh, K.K.Vaze et al., Crack initiation and growth behavior of circumferentially cracked pipes, international journal of pressure vessels and piping, Vol. 80. pp. 629-640. (2003) [4] Raju, I.S. and Newmann, J.C., Stress Intensity factors for a wide range of semi-elliptical crack In finite thickness plates, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Vol. 11, No.4, pp. 817-829. (1979) [5] Kang-sian lee et al, Experimental research on surface crack propagation laws for low alloy steel Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Vol: 80, pp. 106-113. (April 1981) [6] Song P.S et al., Life prediction of semi-elliptical surface cracks International J. of Fracture, Vol. 91, pp. 205-218 (2003) [7] Raju, I.S. and Newmann, J.C., Stress Intensity Factors for Circumferential Surface Cracks in Pipes and Rods under Tension and Bending loads, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Vol:17, pp. 789-805 (1986) [8] D.Peng, C.Wallbrink, R.Jones, An assessment of stress intensity factors for surface flews in a tubular member, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Vol:72, pp. 357-371 (2005) [9] Dugdale, D.S., Yielding of Steels containing Slits, J. of Mechanics and Physics of Solids, Vol. 8, pp. 100-108 (1960)

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