Sloshing damping assessment and structural dynamic analysis of perforated structures for heavy liquid metal under seismic excitation

Abstract

Perforated structures are commonly used to reduce sloshing in many fields, owing to their anti-sloshing and mass reduction advantage. This structure shows greater potential for slosh damping of heavy liquid metal as the fluids have complex properties. As the most promising nuclear technology of the next generation, the lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) is facing the problem that liquid heavy metal sloshing is challenging the component and system safety, which is the top priority of reactor design. Therefore, the sloshing-damping effect of perforated structures is of great significance in this area, especially when harsh conditions. Although some researchers have paid attention to the sloshing behavior of liquid heavy metal, the influence of perforated structures has not been mentioned. For this study, models of heavy-liquid metal containers with perforated structures were built, and simulations were carried out to fill the gap. The sloshing effect was compared under 3 cases of seismic excitations with different accelerations. In simulation results, the sloshing behavior of water agrees well with LBE and perforated structures have effectively restrained the sloshing. The liquid elevation is reduced to 40.5%. It indicates that perforated structures cannot be ignored in experiments. Water can only be used as a potential substitution if perforated structures are considered. Three models with different ratios of holes and clearance (RHC) values are established to investigate the influence of holes distributions. The Newmark-beta algorithm is employed to calculate the deformation of components. Signals of component deformation show that lower RHC has good reliability, and the maximum reduction of deformation is nearly 25.8%. The deformation will increase with increasing sloshing acceleration, and the amplification is nearly 13.5%. This work enriches the sloshing-damping study of heavy liquid metal. It guides the design and sloshing experiments of the advanced LFR.