Report on investigation of cause of crack at instrumentation pipe in JMTR; Results of vibration and stress analysis

Hanawa, Satoshi ; Tachibana, Yukio ; Iyoku, Tatsuo; Ishihara, Masahiro ; Ito, Haruhiko

On the 147cycle operation, the water leakage was found at the pressure instrumentation pipe which is attached to the exit pipe of No.1 charge pump of the purification system of primary cooling system at JMTR in the Oarai establishment, JAERI. Then JMTR was shutted down manually on December 10th. It was predicted that the crack on the pressure instrumentation pipe was initiated and propagated by the cyclic load which was caused by the charge pump. Therefore, vibration and stress analyses of pressure instrumentation pipe were performed. From the vibration analysis, the natural frequency of the pressure instrumentation pipe of No.1 charge pump is between 5358Hz, which is close to the resonance frequency of 50Hz. From the stress analysis results, total stress generated on the pressure instrumentation pipe is 112.2MPa at the natural frequency of 53Hz and 74.2Mpa at 58Hz. It was found that the stress of 112.2MPa is close to the fatigue limit of used materials.