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U.S. Department of Energy
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Pipe-to-pipe impact program

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6237828
The objective of this research was to determine the extent of damage that occurs when two pipes experience an impact event due to one whipping against the other. The research was conducted through experimental and analytical approaches. The former required the development of a specialized impact machine that could accelerate a whipping pipe with sufficient energy to cause failure of a target pipe that was heated and pressurized to Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) conditions. Damage was measured in terms of crushing, bending, and failure. The results of the tests permitted the correlation between pipes of a certain size and the damage they could cause when impacting with a certain amount of known energy. These results were used to evaluate the pipe whip criteria in the Standard Review Plan 3.6.2-4. It was established that the criteria conditions did not fully represent the results obtained experimentally. An analysis procedure to model the pipe whip event was developed and used to establish the test matrix for the experimental program. This analytical procedure can also be used to predict deformation and rupture for postulated pipe whip scenarios. 17 refs.
Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest Lab., Richland, WA (USA); Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (USA). Div. of Engineering
DOE Contract Number:
AC06-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
6237828
Report Number(s):
NUREG/CR-3231; PNL-5779; ON: TI87010802
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English