Finite Element Analysis of Stress and Strain Distribution on Thin Disk Specimen for SCC Initiation Test in High Temperature and Pressure Environment

The rupture disk corrosion test (RDCT) method was recently developed to evaluate stress corrosion cracking (SCC) and was found to have great potential for the real-time detection of SCC initiation in a high temperature and pressure environment, simulating the primary water coolant of pressurized water reactors. However, it is difficult to directly measure the stress applied to a disk specimen, which is an essential factor in SCC initiation. In this work, finite element analysis (FEA) was performed using ABAQUS (TM) to calculate the stress and deformation of a disk specimen. To determine the best mesh design for a thin disk specimen, hexahedron, hex-dominated, and tetrahedron models were used in FEA. All models revealed similar dome-shaped deformation behavior of the disk specimen. However, there was a considerable difference in stress distribution in the disk specimens. In the hex-dominated model, the applied stress was calculated to be the maximum at the dome center, whereas the stress was calculated to be the maximum at the dome edge in the hexahedron and tetrahedron models. From a comparison of the FEA results with deformation behavior and SCC location on the disk specimen after RDCT, the most proper FE model was found to be the tetrahedron model.