(GRS 108) FALSIRE Phase I - CSNI Project For Fracture Analyses of Large- Scale International Reference Experiments (Phase I)

J. Sievers, H. Schulz, B. R. Bass, C. E. Pugh, J. Keeney

A summary of the recently completed Phase I of the Project for Fracture Analysis of Large-Scale International Reference Experiments (Project F ALS IRE) is presented. Project FALSIRE was created by the Fracture Assessment Group (FAG) of Principal Working Group No. 3 of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency's Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI). The CSNI/FAG was formed to evaluate fracture prediction capabilities currently used in safety assessments of nuclear vessel components.
Members are from laboratories and research organizations in Western Europe, Japan, and the United States of America (U.S.A.). To meet its obligations, the CSNI/AG planned Project FALSIRE to assess various fracture methodologies through interpretive analyses of selected large-scale fracture experiments. The six experiments used in Project FALSIRE (performed in the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.A.) were designed to examine various aspects of crack growth in reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steels under pressurized-thermal-shock (PTS) loading conditions.