"Local solid element modeling" for detailed analyses of floor liner

Tsukimori, Kazuyuki

ln order to evaluate the integrity of the floor liner of "MONJU" at sodium leakage accident, nonlinear finite element analyses have been conducted considering the effect of thinning of the liner due to molten salt type corrosion. Modeling by shell elements is appropriate since liner is composed of thin plates, however, it is difficult to deal with the very local strain behaviors. 0n the other hand, modeling by solid elements makes the numerical calculation impractical. If we extract the small part of the liner which includes local discontinuities, it is possible to evaluate local strain behaviors practically by using the solid element analysis model of the part. To realize this approach, the method to generate all the boundary displacements of the part model from the shell element analysis result of total structure is needed. The aims of this study are to develop the method to deal with the incompatibility between shell and solid elements at part model boundary, and to build numerical analysis circumstances including this method to make the detailed nonlinear finite element analyses of the floor liner of "MONJU" possible. Summary of the results is shown below, (1)The problem of the incompatibility between shell and solid elements was solved by introducing weighting function at 'T' and 'L' type corners and the interpolation function of 4-node rectangular plate bending element at the connection between liner plate and frame. (2)Software system was developed by using 'FINAS' and verified. (3)This approach was applied to one of the cases of the floor liner analyses of "MONJU" at sodium leakage accident. The analysis result showed that three-dimensional local strain behavior could be evaluated directly. ln addition, it was confirmed that the result by shell element analysis was conservative in evaluation of strain compared with that by solid element analysis in this case.