ENPOWER - Repair Welds and Residual Stresses in Clad Plates

Abstract

One of the tasks of the European Commission sponsored project ENPOWER was to manufacture repair welds on clad plate specimens simulating the inner wall of a Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) and to establish their structural integrity. The paper summarizes the main results from the repair welds carried out on clad plates with an anticipated sub-clad defect including the results from various residual stress measurements and from numerical welding simulations as well as from some fracture mechanical calculations. The results are discussed with respect to support the repair weld optimization in particular by minimizing the residual stresses. Moreover, the application ranges and capabilities of numerical simulations for this kind of weld processes are discussed.