Fluid-Structure Interaction Analysis Using Finite Element Methods for IRWST of Reactor Building

Abstract

Fluid-structure interaction analysis of in-containment refuelling water storage tank (IRWST) of HPR1000, the Chinese 3rd-generation nuclear reactor type, was performed. During analysis simulation of water was made using three well established methods:1) Dispersed-Mass-Method; 2)Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian(CEL) method; 3)Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics(SPH) method. The member forces and required reinforcement of the IRWST walls from different methods were compared and the following conclusions were drawn: 1) CEL is accurate but time-costing when the analysis target has a complex configuration. Also, CEL analysis is often terminated due to intrinsic algorithm. 2) SPH method provides same results accuracy with that of CEL method when SPH method and CEL method have similar mesh size. It can effectively avoid the problem of unexpected termination in CEL method; 3) the stress and required reinforcement obtained from CEL and SPH method are obviously less than those from Dispersed-Mass-Method, which proves that Dispersed-Mass-Method can be used in preliminary design stage for reinforcement amount evaluation.