Effectiveness evaluation of the measures for improving resilience of nuclear structures against excessive earthquake, 1; Fragility evaluation of reactor vessel based on structural analysis

Nishino, Hiroyuki  ; Kurisaka, Kenichi ; Futagami, Satoshi  ; Watakabe, Tomoyoshi; Yamano, Hidemasa   

The reactor vessel (RV) buckling was a dominant contributor to core damage. However, even if the RV is buckled due to seismic shaking, it is expected that the RV maintains stable state without unstable failure such as rupture, collapse. Realistic consideration of the post-buckling behavior is regarded as a measure for improving the resilience in this study. The purpose of this study is to understand the post-buckling deformation behavior of the RV and to evaluate the RV fragility based on fatigue failure. This study performed structural analysis using a finite element method to quantify time histories of displacement, strain, etc. As the result of the analysis, wrinkles of the buckling appeared at the elevation higher than the liquid level in the RV. The largest strain value was also indicated around this elevation. The cumulative fatigue damage fraction was evaluated in this analysis to evaluate the fragility of fatigue failure in addition to the buckling fragility. The result showed that the seismic intensity for the median fragility of the fatigue failure was about six times larger than the design-basis ground motion. This is 1.2 times larger than the buckling-based result, which suggests that realistic evaluation of the post-buckling behavior could contribute to improving the resilience of the nuclear structure.