PSI - Issue 60

Rishi K Sharma et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 60 (2024) 264–276 Rishi K. Sharma/ Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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Figure 3: Application of pressure and temperature for stress re-orientation of hydrides in Zr-2.5Nb pressure tube spool (Gopalan, et al., 2021)

To monitor the temperature along the tube axis, three thermocouples were installed at both the ends and one at the middle of the spool. 3.3. Pressure tube spool for burst tests 220 MWe pressure tube spools of 475 mm length was used for the experiment. Four numbers of part through wall OD flaws with depth of ~70% of thickness and 100 mm length were machined on the test spool as shown in Figure 4. The spool was rolled into end-fitting flanges at both the ends. The four machined notches were axially located at the center of the spool and were 90° apart in the circumferential orientation. Calandria tube spool concentric to the pressure tube spool was also employed maintaining the annulus space similar to reactor. The test required to pressurize the pressure tube spool between 8-17 MPa internal pressure and temperature in the range of 200-300 °C. The pressure tube spool was connected to the above mentioned loop at both ends through the end-fitting flanges.