An Initial Assessment of the Design Margins of Different ASME Section III, Division 5 Design Rules

Technical Report · Tue Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1658588· OSTI ID:1658588

Messner, M. C. ^[1]; Sham, T. -L. ^[1]

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1. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

This report develops a method for assessing the design margin of the ASME Section III, Division 5 Class A design rules, focusing on a definition of margin as the ratio between the actual, expected component life and the ASME design life. Full inelastic finite element simulations with a complete damage model capturing the available creep, creep-fatigue, fatigue, and tension test failure data produce the expected component lives, which can then be compared to corresponding ASME design calculations. The focus of this particular work is on Alloy 617 and the ASME creep-fatigue design rules, but the approach is general and could be applied to other design limits and to other materials. A margin assessment of a representative Alloy 617 component shows the ASME creep-fatigue design rules applied to this component have a margin of 10 on design life. The report describes several challenges in completing a more comprehensive margin assessment of the ASME rules, in particular challenges in developing probabilistic assessment methods for high temperature structural components. The report details these challenge and discusses the immediate possibilities of the deterministic margin assessment method developed here.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-06CH11357
• OSTI ID: 1658588
• Report Number(s): ANL-ART--196; 162085
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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