INCEFA-PLUS is a five year project supported by the European Commission HORIZON2020 programme. The project concludes in June 2020. 16 organisations from across Europe have combined forces to deliver new experimental data which is being used to develop improved guidelines for assessment of environmental fatigue damage to ensure safe operation of nuclear power plants. Within INCEFA-PLUS, the effects of mean strain and stress, hold time, strain amplitude and surface finish on fatigue endurance of austenitic stainless steels in light water reactor environments have been studied experimentally, these being issues of common interest to all participants. The data obtained has been collected and standardised in an online environmental fatigue database, implemented with the assistance of an INCEFA-PLUS led CEN workshop on this aspect. As the end of the project approaches, INCEFA-PLUS is developing and disseminating methods for including the new data into assessment approaches for environmental fatigue degradation.

This paper provides an overall update to project developments since it was last presented at PVP2019 (PVP2019-93276), and provides provisional project conclusions (which will be finalised for presentation at the conference).  As well as being a standalone paper, the paper will also serve as an introduction to other papers being submitted to covering specific aspects of the project.  In particular this paper summarises:

1\) The results of 3 years of testing (likely concluded by the time of paper submission)

2\) A summary of revealed sensitivities to, and inter-dependencies between:

2a) Mean strain and stress, surface finish, strain amplitude and hold time.

2b) Environment

2c) Material

2d) Laboratory (including specimen size and form)

3\) The latest thoughts on how the project results will be used to advance development of improved assessment guidelines.

4\) Progress developing an International EAF database.

5\) A summary of dissemination achieved and planned.

6) The status of INCEFA-SCALE plans for work after the end of INCEFA-PLUS.


Incefa-Plus (Increasing Safety in Npps by Covering Gaps in Environmental Fatigue Assessment

Division / Sponsors: 
Pressure Vessels & Piping (PVP)


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/PVP2020/volume/83815

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