Probabilistic fracture mechanics benchmarking study involving the xLPR and PASCAL-SP codes; Analysis by PASCAL-SP

Mano, Akihiro ; Katsuyama, Jinya  ; Li, Y. 

A probabilistic fracture mechanics (PFM) analysis code PASCAL-SP has been developed by Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) for evaluating the failure probability of piping in nuclear power plant considering aged-related degradations such as primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC) in pressurized water reactor environments and fatigue. To strengthen the confidence of analysis results, benchmarking study is being performed with PFM analysis code xLPR which has been developed by U.S.NRC in collaboration with EPRI. The benchmarking study consists of deterministic and probabilistic analyses on PWSCC under the common analysis conditions. In addition, deterministic sensitivity analysis on weld residual stress distributions is also included in the benchmarking study. These analyses are carried out by U.S.NRC and JAEA independently using their own codes. At current stage, the deterministic analyses by both xLPR and PASCAL-SP codes have been finished and probabilistic analyses are underway. This paper presents the details of conditions and comparisons of the results between the two codes in the deterministic analyses. In the deterministic analyses, both codes provided almost the same results including the values of stress intensity factor. In addition, probabilistic analysis conditions and results obtained from PASCAL-SP are presented.