Applicability of alloy 690/52/152 crack growth testing conditions to plant components

Abstract

A great deal of PWSCC testing has been conducted on a range of A690 materials. An expert panel organized by EPRI is working to collect all the available laboratory data for its applicability to actual plant components. This paper will review the considerations that are being used to perform this evaluation, and the results of that evaluation. One of the key variables is cold work, and detailed studies have been conducted to measure the residual strains, so as to determine the amount of cold work that can exist in a heat-affected-zone (HAZ) region of a typical weld. In addition to these measurements on weldments, limitations on bulk cold work on base metal imposed by all vendors will be reviewed. The effect of the orientation of the specimens tested will be compared with the orientations of typical flaws in operating plants, so as to determine the relevance of the data to those plants.