ENGINEERING-13

Investigation on Buckling of PFBR Vessels under

Seismic Loadings with Fluid Structure Interactions
n EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
An integrated analysis for determining realistic dynamic forces and critical buckling loads at any instant during the
seismic event has been carried out for the reactor assembly vessels of Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR). The inner
vessel is found to be the most critical component which buckles under seismic forces induced by a safe shutdown
earthquake with a load multiplier of 1.52, which is higher than the minimum factor of safety of 1.3 required as per the
design code RCC-MR (2002)

n OUTLINE
The critical failure mechanism that decides the
structural design of thin vessels of Prototype Fast
Breeder Reactor (PFBR) is buckling under seismic
event. The main vessel which houses the entire
primary sodium circuit, inner vessel which separates
the hot and cold sodium pools and thermal baffles
which protects the main vessel from the heat flux
emanating from the hot pool are the important
structures to be analysed. The investigation of
buckling risks of these vessels calls for determination
of dynamic forces, in particular the dynamic pressure
distributions developed on the vessel surfaces and
evaluation of buckling strength. The seismic events
generate complicated unsymmetrical pressure
distributions which have both temporal and spatial
variations. In a classical way, the analysis is carried
out in an uncoupled way, in the sense that
determination of seismic forces in the first phase,
estimation of integrated forces and moments in the
second phase and evaluation of critical buckling load
factor in the third phase for each vessels. In this Fig. 1 : FE model of PFBR reactor assembly
analysis, the realistic stress distribution is naturally
lost. Another approach would be evaluating the
critical buckling load factor at each time step
employed for the seismic analysis. This approach
consumes considerable computer time making the
solution not practicable. In view of these difficulties,
an integrated analysis is established through which
the realistic critical buckling loads and associated
mode shapes are evaluated based on buckling
analysis under the dynamic forces generated at a few
critical time steps only. The critical time steps are
those at which the strain energy developed is
maximum in the vessels due to compressive and
shear stresses generated during the seismic event.
Seismic analysis is carried out by applying the
seismic excitations at the reactor assembly support
simultaneously in the two mutually perpendicular a. Main vessel b. Inner vessel
horizontal directions (X and Y directions) under safe
shutdown earthquake (SSE). The possible
randomness on the generated support time histories
are accounted properly by compressing the time scale
by 10 % as well as by expanding the time scale by
10 %. Axisymmetric analysis is carried out with
fourier option assigning the harmonic wave number,
equal to 1 for the horizontal excitations. In order to
obtain the lowest critical buckling load factor in a
single analysis including 3D geometrical features,
buckling analysis is performed on 3D geometries.
Towards this, the pressure/force distributions
extracted from axisymmetric analysis at the given
critical time step, are translated to corresponding 3D
geometries. The finite element mesh is shown in Fig.1.
The pressure distributions on the vessels extracted at
the critical time steps are depicted in Fig.2. c. Inner baffle d. Outer baffle

Fig. 2 : Pressure distributions at a critical time step

136
 ENGINEERING-13

n GENERAL EXPLANATION RELATED TO THE DESCRIPTION

For the buckling analysis, half symmetric geometries are
generated for the main vessel, inner vessel and integrated
geometry of inner and outer thermal baffles. Since the main
vessel and thermal baffles are symmetric structures, 3D
geometries are generated by 180o rotation of the respective
axisymmetric elements. The buckled mode shapes of main
vessel, thermal baffle and inner vessel obtained at a critical time
step are shown in Fig.3. The critical buckling load factors are
shown in Table-1.
Table-1
Critical buckling load factors
Sl.No Component X-direction Y-Direction a. Main vessel b. Thermal baffle
1 Main vessel 2.72 3.0 vessel
Inner
2 1.52 1.6
vessel
Outer
3 3.0 2.56
baffle
4 Inner baffle 3.0 2.4

The design adequacy is checked as per the design code

RCC-MR (2002) which specifies a requirement of minimum 1.3
factor of safety on the computed critical buckling load for the
SSE. This means that the minimum critical buckling load
should be more than 1.3 times the loads developed under SSE.
With the minimum load factors of 2.72, 1.52, 2.56 and 2.4
computed for the main vessel, inner vessel, outer and inner c. Inner vessel
thermal baffles respectively, it is demonstrated that the critical
vessels in the reactor assembly respect the buckling design
criteria of RCC-MR. Fig. 3 : Buckled mode shapes of vessels

n ACHIEVEMENT
The complex analysis is done to demonstrate the structural integrity of reactor assembly components under seismic
loadings with an innovative analysis methodology by addressing all the associated complexities. This is an important
analysis to get the safety clearance for PFBR.
With the realistic analysis, possibly minimum thicknesses have been selected for reactor assembly components with
higher confidence.

n PUBLICATIONS ARISING OUT OF THIS STUDY AND RELATED WORK

P.Chellapandi, S.C.Chetal and Baldev Raj, ASME Trans. Pressure Vessel and Piping (In Press).

Further inquiries:
Dr. P. Chellapandi, Nuclear Engineering Group
Reactor Engineering Group, IGCAR, e-mail: pcp@igcar.gov.in

137