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Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
Ryoichi Kurihara, Shuzo Ueda, Eisuke Tada
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 1465-1469
Safety and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963155
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A vacuum vessel wall with a postulated crack is modeled by using the two-dimensional solid finite elements. The J-integral value, a criterion of fracture mechanics, is calculated to estimate the integrity of the vacuum vessel wall with a postulated crack.
The analytical results show that the J-integral value of a crack having a quarter depth of the wall width is considerably less than the fracture toughness JIC when the membrane stress is less than the 0.2% proof stress of the unirradiated material, even if the vacuum vessel is irradiated to 3 dpa. This means that a shallow crack in the vacuum vessel wall does not become critical in the design load.