Fracture behavior of cracked Type 304 stainless steel pipes under tensile and thermal loadings

Because of frequent discoveries of stress corrosion cracking in BWR primary piping systems, it became an urgent problem to evaluate the possibility of unstable fracture of flawed stainless steel pipes. To understand the fundamental fracture property as well as the behavior under actual plant conditions, the authors performed the following four types of tests on the cracked Type 304 stainless steel plates or pipes. 1.1. Plate fracture test under tensile loading.2.2. Pipe fracture test under tensile loading.3.3. Leak-before-break test under high-compliance loading.4.4. Thermal shock test.