Abstract

The spacer grid set is a part of a nuclear fuel assembly. The set has a spring and the spring supports the fuel rods safely. Although material nonlinearity is involved in the deformation of the spring, nonlinearity has not been considered in design of the spring. Recently a nonlinear response structural optimization method has been developed using equivalent loads. It is called nonlinear response optimization equivalent loads (NROEL). In NROEL, the external loads are transformed to the equivalent loads (EL) for linear static analysis and linear response optimization is carried out based on the EL in a cyclic manner until the convergence criteria are satisfied. EL is the load set which generates the same response field of linear analysis as that of nonlinear analysis. Shape optimization of the spring is carried out based on EL. The objective function is defined by minimizing the maximum stress in the spring while mass is limited and the support force of the spring is larger than a certain value. The results are verified by nonlinear response analysis. ABAQUS is used for nonlinear response analysis and GENESIS is employed for linear response optimization.

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