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Provided by ASME Logo The American Society of Mechanical Engineers

EPRI Workshop

“Material Challenges in Assessment of Fitness for Service”

held in Collaboration with ASME 2021 PVP Conference

Friday July 16, 2021, 8:30am – 1:00pm Eastern USA time.

Workshop Background

EPRI has been providing technical support to key Global stakeholders in the Electricity Supply Industry for over 40 years. In the Generation Sector, a key research imperative is knowledge creation and technology transfer linked to reliable, safe and economically flexible operation of power plants. EPRI collaboration has included contributions to development of databases containing key properties for high temperature alloys, contributions to methods of Design and Fabrication as well as compiling Case Studies of in-service issues and facilitating Root Cause assessment.

Technology transfer has been an important aspect of this work so that lessons learned can be used to establish best practice; these activities have included annual workshops, publication of summary documents and additional research. Excellence in science and engineering is necessary to underpin technology which will help to meet challenges associated with safe and reliable operation of plants.

This Event

The Workshop in 2021 will consider “Material Challenges in Assessment of Fitness for Service”. There will be 5 formal presentations from invited expert speakers followed by a discussion session. Achieving the usual levels of engagement and interaction in a virtual meeting will be a challenge. However, we will be working to make sure that all delegates can ask relevant questions. Thus, there will be the opportunity to submit questions prior to the Workshop. In addition, during the Workshop there will be a ‘chat box’ and there will also be the opportunity to raise a flag and then initiate discussion on presentation specific topics or more broadly linked to assessment of FFS.

It is recognized that prevention of catastrophic structural failure requires the application of an integrated approach which includes knowledge of relevant materials properties as well as informed engineering analysis, quality assurance, plant monitoring and in-service inspection. Many approaches for assessing the performance of structures use a Failure Assessment Diagram to evaluate both the potential for plastic instability and for fast fracture. Both assessments require knowledge of component properties. The uncertainty associated with selecting relevant values even when using published rules for making structural integrity assessments still necessitates the use of expert technical judgement. The current Workshop will provide an inclusive forum for consideration of how these challenges have been addressed in selected applications.

Workshop Agenda

8.30am Welcome and Introduction; Jonathan Parker                                                                                                                                       

8.45 “The impact of uncertainty in materials data and fitness-for-service”, Dave Dewees Becht Engineering and John Siefert, EPRI.

9.15 “Damage susceptibility in tempered martensitic steels – Implications for applications and in-service assessments”, Ian Perrin, Triaxispower

9.45 “Enhanced creep-fatigue life assessment capabilities by means of component-near testing”, C. Kontermann, F. Garnadt, H. Almstedt, M. Oechsner, Technical University of Darmstadt and Siemens.

10.30 BREAK

11.00 “Hydrogen-assisted fatigue and fracture of pressure vessel and line pipe steels”; Chris San Marchi and Joe Ronevich; Sandia National Laboratories

11.30 "Fitness-for-Service methods for evaluation of crack initiation from hydrides at flaws in CANDU reactor Zr-2.5Nb pressure tubes" Douglas Scarth and Steven Xu, Kinectrics, Inc.

12.00 Discussion

13.00 CLOSE