Development of structural response diagram approach to evaluation of thermal stress caused by thermal striping

Kasahara, Naoto; Yacumpai, A.*; Takasho, Hideki*

JNC TN9400 99-019, 34 Pages, 1999/02

JNC-TN9400-99-019.pdf:0.97MB

At incomplete mixing area of high temperature and low temperature fluids near the surface of structures, temperature fluctuation of fluid gives thermal fatigue damage to wall structures. This thermohydraulic and thermomechanical coupled phenomenon is called thermal striping, which has so complex mechanism and sometimes causes crack initiation on the structural surfaces that rational evaluation methods are required for screening rules in design codes. In this study, frequency response characteristics of structures and its mechanism were investigated by both numerical and theoretical methods. Based on above investigation, a structural response diagram was derived, which can predict stress amplitude of structures from temperature amplitude and frequency of fluids. Furthermore, this diagram was generalized to be the Non-dimensional structural response diagram by introducing non-dimensional parameters such as Biot number, non-dimensional frequency, and non-dimensional stress. The use of the Non-dimensional structural response diagram appears to evaluate thermal stress caused by thermal striping, rapidly without structural analysis, and rationally with considering attenuation by non-stationary heat transfer and thermal unloading. This diagram can also give such useful information as sensitive frequency range to adjust coupled thermohydraulic and thermomechanical analysis models taking account of four kinds of attenuation factors: turbulent mixing, molecular diffusion, non-stationaly heat transfer, and thermal unloading.

Preliminary deformation analysis of the reactor vessel due to core debris accumulation onto the skirt of the core catcher for Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor

Onoda, Yuichi; Yamano, Hidemasa

no journal, , 

In Japan, sodium-cooled fast reactor design takes In-Vessel Retention (IVR) strategy to stably cool damaged core materials in the reactor vessel during a severe accident with various design measures. Although a possibility to fail IVR is extremely low, a probabilistic risk assessment study needs a wide variety of scenarios including the IVR failure. Therefore, in order to study of a wide range of event spectra related to stable cooling of debris in the reactor vessel, this study numerically investigated the deformation and failure behavior of the reactor vessel due to the debris deposited onto the skirt of the core catcher using the FINAS-STAR structural analysis code. The analyses are conducted in two cases of power density with the aim of investigating failure conditions of the bottom of the reactor vessel. Reactor vessel deforms significantly when the temperature reaches about 1100C and the reactor vessel reaches the failure criteria in high-power-density case.