A Study on the Profile Change Measurement of Steam Generator Tubes with Tube Expansion Methods

Abstract

Steam generator tubes for nuclear power plants contain the local shape transitions on their inner or outer surface such as dent, bulge, over-expansion, eccentricity, deflection, and so on by the application of physical force during the tube manufacturing and steam generator assembling and by the sludge (that is, corrosion products) produced during the plant operation. The structural integrity of tubes will be degraded by generating the corrosive crack at that location. The profilometry using the traditional bobbin probes which are currently applied for measuring the profile change of tubes gives us basic information such as axial locations and average magnitudes of deformations. However, the three-dimensional quantitative evaluation on circumferential locations, distributional angle, and size of deformations will have to be conducted to understand the effects of residual stresses increased by local deformations on corrosive cracking of tubes. Steam generator tubes of Korean standard nuclear power plants expanded within their tube-sheets by the explosive expansion method and suffered from corrosive cracks in the early stage of power operation. Thus, local deformations of steam generator tubes at the top of tube-sheet were measured with an advanced rotating probe and a laser profiling system for the two cases where the tubes expanded by the explosive expansion method and hydraulic expansion. Also, the trends of eccentricity, deflection, and over-expansion of tubes were evaluated. The advanced eddy current profilometry was confirmed to provide accurate information of local deformations compared with laser profilometry.