Coupled Thermoelastic Analysis of Thick-Walled Pressurized Cylinders

Abstract

In the present study, the coupled thermoelastic analysis was carried out for determining the temperature, radial displacement, and radial and circumferential stress distributions of a classical cylinder, and later a reactor pressure vessel exposed to an inner moderator pressure and thermal loads. For the solution, a critical region is analyzed to imitate the effect of the outlet nozzles of the reactor pressure vessel. In order to certify our computational code, the temperature, radial displacement, radial stress, and circumferential stress distributions were also calculated using finite element (FE) method. It was concluded that the analytical results were in good agreement with the computational ones for the classic cylinder. The effect of thermomechanical loads on the temperature, displacement, and stress distributions was discussed in detail. This presented analysis proposes satisfactory results to design reactor pressure vessels.