scope:

This report documents verification and application of a modeling approach to the detailed inelastic analysis of large diameter, thin walled piping configurations typical of liquid metal cooled reactor primary piping, subjected to mechanical loads and thermal shock, with intermediate periods of creep under constant load and temperature. The primary purposes of the project are fourfold: first, to provide verification of the modeling approach; second, to investigate the importance of straight pipe/pipebend interaction effects ("end effects") in realistic cases; third, to demonstrate and compare a more economic analysis method that neglects end effects; and fourth, to show that this level of analysis effort is feasible even for preliminary piping system analysis. The basic modeling approach has been described and applied to test cases elsewhere. In this report, the approach is first verified by application to the International Piping Benchmark Problem I, the Battelle-Columbus elbow test. These verification studies establish minimum levels of discretization that provide good correlation of detailed local stress and strain predictions with results of other studies of the same experiment. The major part of the report documents the application of the approach to a typical LMFBR primary piping configuration subjected to a realistic design loading transient, and compares results with and without end effects on the pipebends, as well as comparing results with one independent analysis