Earthquake response of a core shroud for APR1400

Abstract

The core shroud is one of the most important internal components of the reactor vessel internals because it meets the neutron fluence directly emitted by the nuclear fuel. In particular, dynamic effects for an earthquake should be evaluated with respect to the neutron irradiation flux. As a prerequisite to this study, simplified and detailed finite element models are developed for the core shroud using the ANSYS Design Parametric Language. Using the El Centro earthquake, seismic analyses are performed for the simplified and detailed core shroud models. Modal characteristics are obtained and their results are used for a time history analysis. Response spectrum analyses are also performed to access the degree of seismic excitation. The results of these analyses are compared to investigate the response characteristics between the simplified and detailed core shroud models from the time history and response spectrum analyses.

Keywords

• Reactor vessel internals (RVI)
• Core shroud
• Finite element model
• Seismic analysis
• Earthquake