A study on fatigue crack growth in the high cycle domain assuming sinusoidal thermal loading

The assessment of fatigue crack growth due to turbulent mixing of hot and cold coolants presents significant challenges, in particular to determine the thermal loading spectrum and the associated crack growth. The sinusoidal method is a simplified approach for addressing this problem, in which the entire spectrum is replaced by a sine-wave variation of the temperature at the inner pipe surface. The loading frequency is taken as that which gives the shortest crack initiation and growth life. Such estimates are intended to be conservative but not un-realistic. Several practical issues which arise with this approach have been studied using newly-developed analytical solutions for the temperature and stress fields in hollow cylinders, in particular the assumptions made concerning the crack orientation, dimensions and aspect ratio. The application of the proposed method is illustrated for the pipe geometry and loadings conditions reported for the Civaux 1 case where through wall thermal fatigue cracks developed in a short time, but the problem is relevant also for fast reactor components.