Experimental and numerical analyses on flow-induced vibration of a nuclear engineering test reactor internal

Abstract

Abstract We report the results of a recent study in which two important aspects of flow-induced vibration of a new designed nuclear engineering test reactor internal were considered: (1) modal experiment and analysis of core barrel and secondary core support structure both in air and in water; (2) dynamic experiment and analysis of core barrel and secondary core support structure. In this paper, a 1/2 scaled-down experimental model and a three-dimensional finite element model of this new nuclear reactor was conducted, separately. The natural frequencies and principle modes of the core barrel and secondary core support structure both in air and water were obtained from the modal experiments and analysis, respectively. The results of the numerical analysis were in very good agreement with the experimental data. And, the maximum relative error between the experimental results and numerical results is less than 4%. Then, the 1/2 scaled-down model was installed in the hydrodynamics simulation system, experimental measurements of displacements, pulsating pressures and strains of the core barrel and secondary core support structure were presented. To obtain the max stresses and strains of the nuclear reactor internals, a theoretical analysis method was proposed. As a general conclusion, the numerical analysis with dynamic experiment is effective and efficient for calculating the max stress and strain of nuclear rector internals.