Study on flaw acceptance standard of ASME Code Sec.XI based on failure probability

Shibata, Katsuyuki; Onizawa, Kunio; Li, Y.*; Kanto, Yasuhiro*; Yoshimura, Shinobu*

Pressure Vessel and Piping Codes and Standards (PVP-Vol.480), p.235 - 242, 2004/00

A screening standard of small flaws that have no significant influence on the structural integrity is prescribed in ASME Code Sec.XI. From the viewpoint of probabilistic methodology, there are some concerns that weather or not the failure probability is uniform for flaws with various aspect ratios and failure frequencies are small enough. Moreover, acceptable flaws may be determined more rationally based the failure probability. A study was performed on the failure probability of RPVs with a surface flaw specified in Sec.XI using the PFM code PASCAL. A PTS transient of NRC/EPRI Benchmark Study was used. Analysis results showed that the conditional failure probability of a RPV with an initial flaw of acceptable depth depended on the aspect ratio. For a circular flaw, the failure probability is high due to the increase in crack initiation at the surface point. The maximum difference in failure probability reaches one order of magnitude. A case study for determining the acceptable flaws based on failure probability was also carried out.