Assessment of tensile properties across pressure vessel nozzle to primary piping safe-end employing instrumented indentation testing

Abstract

This study deals with the assessment of tensile properties across the nozzle to primary piping safe-end employing the instrumented indentation testing (IIT). Standard tensile tests were performed in order to validate the results of IIT. Tensile properties were also estimated from conventional hardness test. Both the yield strength and tensile strength measured by IIT were in satisfactory agreement with the results of standard tensile tests and were found superior compared to the values estimated from the conventional hardness measurement. Highest deviation between the results of IIT and tensile tests was found in the regions of weldments. IIT showed as capable of measuring the variation of tensile properties across the pressure vessel nozzle to primary piping safe-end. Moreover, IIT has the advantage over the tensile testing that specimens do not need to be extracted from the studied piece and more detailed distribution of mechanical properties can be acquired.