Support-induced restraint effect of thin-walled tube in a steam generator subjected to combined pressure and bending load

The restraint effects of support plates on limit load (LL) are evaluated for thin-walled tubes subjected to combined internal pressure and bending loads. To achieve this goal, three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) analyses assuming elastic-perfectly plastic material behaviour are carried out for tubes with various sizes of circumferential cracks. Two crack locations, both the top of the tube sheet (TTS) and transition regions, where circumferential cracks have been found in many steam generators during operation, are considered. FE analysis results show that LLs for the circumferential cracks are significantly affected by the boundary conditions of the tube and that the resulting LL solutions can be simply applied to the practical integrity assessment of steam generator tubes, because the comparison between experimental data and FE analysis results shows a good agreement.