Author(s)

M. Kovac & L. Cizelj

Abstract

PWR steam generator tubing made of Inconel 600 is subjected to the stress corrosion cracking, which produces highly irregular shapes with a high degree of crack branching. The state-of-the-art analytical and experimental efforts in linear elastic fracture mechanics are mostly focussed on simple shaped cracks in uniaxial stress field. While only a few solutions exist for simple shaped and kinked cracks in biaxial stress fields, with solutions of branched cracks currently limited to equibiaxial stress field, numerical analysis using methods such as finite or boundary element method may provide useful and cost effective solutions. However, accurate analysis of branched cracks may require very fine meshes and, consequently, excessively high computational efforts. The paper discus

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