The Effect of Load Reduction on Crack Initiation Behavior of Hydrides From Flaws in Zr-2.5Nb Pressure Tube Material
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Flaws in Zr-2.5Nb alloy pressure tubes in CANDU® nuclear reactors are susceptible to a crack initiation and growth mechanism known as Delayed Hydride Cracking (DHC). DHC is a repetitive process that involves hydrogen diffusion, hydride precipitation, growth of the hydrided region, and fracture of the hydrided region at the flaw tip. One scenario of crack initiation is that the flaw-tip hydrides are formed and cracked at the same stress under constant reactor operating pressure. This is known as crack initiation under constant-load condition. Another scenario of crack initiation is that the flaw-tip hydrides are formed at the operating pressure and then cracked during a transient over-pressure. This is known as crack initiation under overload condition as the hydrides are subjected to a stress higher than the hydride formation stress. In some CANDU reactors, a 20% reduction in pressure is implemented during reactor cool-down. This paper examines the effect of pressure reduction, and hence load reduction, on flaw-tip hydride morphology and crack initiation behavior under constant-load and overload conditions. Experiments were performed on specimens of an unirradiated Zr-2.5Nb pressure tube, with 57 wt. ppm hydrogen concentration. The specimens contained machined V-notches with a root radius of 0.015 mm to simulate service-induced debris fretting flaws. The results indicate that the 20% load reduction increases the threshold stresses for crack initiation under constant-load and overload conditions. Finite element stress analyses were performed to determine the notch-tip stress distribution under constant-load and 20% load-reduction conditions. The load reduction lowers the notch-tip peak stress and shifts its location away from the notch surface. This is consistent with the notch-tip hydride morphologies observed using optical and scanning electron microscopy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".