Measurements of stresses, forces and moments on nuclear steam generators
- Resource Type
- Authors
- M. T. Flaman; N. N. Shah
- Source
- Experimental Mechanics. 23:10-14
- Subject
- Steam drum
endocrine system
Engineering
business.industry
Mechanical Engineering
Boiler (power generation)
Aerospace Engineering
Mechanical engineering
Steam pressure
Induced stress
Mechanics of Materials
Solid mechanics
Fluid dynamics
business
- Language
- ISSN
- 1741-2765
0014-4851
Regulatory demands required that strain-gage measurements be made on a steam drum/steam generator assembly to ensure that ASME code limits would not be exceeded during operation. The major difficulty in the performance of this measurement project was centered primarily on the lack of accurate information on the thermal-expansion behavior of the components to be instrumented. In addition, another difficulty in the performance of the measurements was the effect of unknown through-wall thermally induced stresses on the strain-gage readings. To overcome these significant obstacles, an unconventional measurement approach was developed for the analysis of strain-gage measurements. This approach enabled known information on internal steamgenerator steam pressure to be substituted for the unknown information (as described above) which is usually required for strain-gage analysis. This approach has been successfully verified and may have widespread applicability for other measurement projects which face the same commonly encountered difficulties.