Nuclear Engineering and Design 291 (2015) 168–178

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Nuclear Engineering and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nucengdes

Comparison of PTS analyses of RPVs based on 3D-CFD and RELAP5

V.F. González-Albuixech ∗ , G. Qian, M. Sharabi, M. Niffenegger, B. Niceno, N. Lafferty
Paul Scherrer Institut, Nuclear Energy and Safety Department, Structural Integrity Group, CH-5232, Villigen PSI, Switzerland

h i g h l i g h t s

• RPV fracture mechanics model based on RELAP5.

• RPV fracture mechanics model based on CFD.
• Comparison of models based on RELAP5 and CFD for fracture mechanics.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The integrity of a reactor pressure vessel related to pressurized thermal shocks is one of the most impor-
Received 24 November 2014 tant issues for the assessment of life time extension of a nuclear power plant. The most critical scenario
Received in revised form 24 April 2015 occurs during cold water injection through the cold leg due to a Loss-Of-Coolant Accident (LOCA). Due
Accepted 3 May 2015
to the difficulties associated with the crack modeling with the three-dimensional finite element method
(FEM), simple geometries and crack configurations are usually employed.
In the present study, a hypothetical medium break LOCA is assumed in one of the hot legs for an adopted
reference design of a two-loop pressurized water reactor. The boundary conditions obtained from RELAP5
calculations are used as input for the three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulations in
order to provide three-dimensional temperature distribution for the structural mechanics analysis in
which submodeling and eXtended FEM (XFEM) are applied. The results from these three-dimensional
computations are compared with those from simplified axisymmetric models based on reference data
temperatures.
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The structural integrity of a Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) is
usually considered as a limiting factor for the operation time of a
nuclear power plant, as it contains the reactor core and the reactor
coolant, is crucial for the safe confinement of the radioactive fuel
inventory, and is regarded as non-replaceable. Furthermore, RPV
of nuclear power plants are exposed to neutron irradiation, which
causes embrittlement of the ferritic steels and makes the material
susceptible to brittle fracture (Odette and Lucas, 1986).
One potential risk for the integrity of a RPV is the brittle failure
due to a Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS), which occurs in case of
an emergency cooling of the core, as a Loss-Of-Coolant Accident
(LOCA). This is typically associated with a depressurization which,
in the worst case, can be followed by a re-pressurization. Pres-
surized thermal shocks are produced by a number of events and
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +41 563104364.
E-mail address: vicente.gonzalez@psi.ch (V.F. González-Albuixech).
accidents like a pipe break in the primary pressure circuit, a stuck-
open valve in the primary circuit that later re-closes, or a break in
the main steam line.
The most severe conditions for PTS take place when cold Emer-
gency Core Cooling (ECC) water is injected inside the cold legs filled
initially with hotter primary water and/or steam. The cold plume
will flow into the downcomer and cool the RPV walls causing large
temperature gradients. Pressurized thermal shock transients lead
to high tensile circumferential and axial stresses in the RPV walls,
these high stress states may produce crack initiation, propagation
and, in the worst case, even brittle failure. As a consequence, the
RPV has to be assessed against cleavage fracture (Keim et al., 2001;
Qian and Niffenegger, 2013a,b, 2014; Shum et al., 1994).
Accurate prediction of the temperature distributions is neces-
sary for determination of the stresses resulting from these thermal
loads and for assessment of failure probability of the RPV due to
crack propagation at critical locations (Smith, 2010; Boyd, 2012).
However the one-dimensional models, used in thermal hydraulic
analysis softwares such as RELAP5 or TRACE, cannot realistically
represent the complex mixing phenomena in the downcomer.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2015.05.025
0029-5493/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 V.F. González-Albuixech et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 291 (2015) 168–178
Nomenclature
RPV Reactor Pressure Vessel
PTS Pressurized Thermal Shock
LOCA Loss-Of-Coolant Accident
CFD Computational Fluid Dynamics
FEM Finite Element Method
XFEM eXtended Finite Element Method
LEFM Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics
SIF Stress Intensity Factor
PWR Pressurized Water Reactor
MLOCA Medium Loss-Of-Coolant Accident
BPG Best Practice Guidelines
FM Fracture Mechanics
RCP Reactor Coolant Pumps
SIP Safety Injection Pumps
FE Finite Element
a semielliptical crack depth [mm]
c semielliptical crack length [mm]
E elastic modulus [MPa]
h height of modeled RPV geometry or simplified RPV
geometry [m]
KI mode I linear elastic stress intensity factor
[MPa m0.5 ]
Ri inner radius of the modeled RPV geometry [m]
t thickness of RPV wall [mm]
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), on the other hand, is able
to take into account the details of geometry and to predict multi-
dimensional features of the mixing process between the ECC
subcooled water and the primary hot water or two-phase mixture
present in the cold legs and the downcomer. However CFD models
are usually very time consuming from the computational point of
view. Therefore, simplified models with an axisymmetric thermal
hydraulic approximation are used for the PTS temperature evolu-
tion during the transient instead of using the three-dimensional
plume information.
The mechanical model for RPV analysis is also very often
reduced to a three-dimensional axisymmetric model (or even to
a two-dimensional model) containing only the characteristic prop-
erties of the wall, due to the difficulties associated to a complete
realistic three-dimensional modeling. Furthermore, these simpli-
fied models are usually assumed as over-conservative (Qian and
Niffenegger, 2013b, 2014; González-Albuixech et al., 2014a,b).
However, if more detailed temperature information is used, it is not
clear if such simplifications and symmetry assumptions are valid.
The numerical structural integrity analysis of the RPV usually
relies on the modeling of the RPV and the crack within the Finite Ele-
ment Method (FEM) framework. The necessity of a mesh that adapts
to the geometry of the RPV and also to the crack topology imposes
some limitations, which simplified models entail. However, some
new techniques have been recently developed that allow more
comprehensive analysis of the RPV, like the eXtended Finite Ele-
ment Method (XFEM; Duflot, 2006; Gravouil et al., 2002; Moës et al.,
1999, 2002; Sukumar et al., 2000). Furthermore, XFEM was recently
implemented in the commercial finite element code ABAQUS,
Hibbitt et al. (2013) and already successfully applied to study a sim-
plified RPV model (González-Albuixech et al., 2014a,b). A submodel
analysis technique is linked to the complete three-dimensional RPV
model study, as a complete detailed structural integrity analysis is
not feasible due to the mesh refinement required for studying local
effects as cracks.
The integrity analysis of RPVs is mostly based on the compar-
ison of the mode I stress intensity factor (SIF) of postulated or
169
detected flaws with the fracture toughness, KIC , for the whole PTS.
Calculation of the mode I SIF, KI , is generally based on the Linear
Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM) theory. Moreover, the fracture
toughness testing standards use highly constrained specimens and
consequently the application of the LEFM framework can yield to
over-conservative results. However, these results are still of great
benefit for determining the RPV structural integrity for a given crack
geometry (Keim et al., 2001; Qian and Niffenegger, 2013b, 2014;
Shum et al., 1994; Zhu and Joyce, 2012).
In the present work a fracture mechanic analysis of a realistic
RPV for a reference Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) is performed.
A Medium size LOCA (MLOCA) scenario according to a 70 cm2 leak
in the hot leg is chosen because it results in very rapid cooling
in addition to high system pressure loads on the RPV and cor-
responds to the worst situation for the RPV structural integrity
analysis. After defining the initial and boundary conditions from
the RELAP5 system code calculations, the CFD analysis of PTS is
performed with state-of-the-art computational methods and fol-
lowing as close as possible the Best Practice Guidelines (BPG) for the
application of CFD in nuclear safety analysis (Mahaffy et al., 2007).
The obtained transient results for the three-dimensional tempera-
ture distributions are then extracted from CFD for the subsequent
Fracture Mechanics (FM) analysis. The fracture mechanic analysis
relies on submodeling and XFEM allowing the analysis of differ-
ent crack geometries and locations without complicated remeshing
techniques. The same analysis is repeated for the same PTS tran-
sient using the temperature distribution obtained from reference
data on a simplified mechanical model with axisymmetric load
conditions.
The calculated SIFs are compared to those resulting from sim-
plified models showing that the core region simplified model with
homogeneous cooling yields to non-conservative results. Conse-
quently if only a simplified model and boundary conditions are used
the results cannot be considered as over-conservative as the tran-
sient effect is underestimated, thus for structural integrity analysis
a three-dimensional model as realistic as possible should be used.
2. Computational fluid dynamics model
The RELAP5 (SCIENTECH Inc., 1999) system code was used to
investigate different LOCA transient scenarios assuming breaks
with varying sizes in each test for the cold and hot legs. In the cur-
rent study, the RELAP5 results for a break size of 70 cm2 in the hot
leg are used to extract the reference initial and boundary condi-
tions for the CFD calculations. A hypothetical break in the hot leg is
more severe for PTS than a break in cold leg, because in the latter
case part of the ECC water would flow out of the break and will
not reach the downcomer. After the break, the system pressure
decreases quickly and the Reactor Coolant Pumps (RCP) are postu-
lated to be tripped with the actuation of a pressure signal. The high
pressure safety injection water is injected in each cold leg from the
Safety Injection Pumps (SIP) at a temperature of 30 ◦ C. The pressure
then reaches a value of 6.9 MPa at which additional safety water is
injected from two accumulators connecting the cold legs at differ-
ent lines before the system pressure continues to decrease again.
In the current study, only the accumulator connected to loop B (see
Fig. 1) is assumed operational which leads to asymmetric cooling
conditions. This was found to create larger thermal loads than in
case of symmetric injection conditions (Sharabi et al., 2014).
At the start of the ECC injection, the flow in the loops was almost
stagnant. The ECC from SIP reaches a value of 80 kg/s in each loop
and it remains constant for a long period of time. The flow rate from
the accumulator has an average value of 200 kg/s and the temper-
ature of the injected water was assumed to be 10 ◦ C. In order to
save computation time, the CFD calculations were launched at the
170 V.F. González-Albuixech et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 291 (2015) 168–178
Fig. 1. Cut-view description of the CFD computational domain.
conditions relevant to PTS phenomenon; i.e., with the start of the
ECC injection in the cold legs and by taking the initial conditions at
that time instant from RELAP5 results. It was assumed that both the
SIP and the accumulator inject the emergency cooling water at the
same time in order to start the CFD calculations from quasi-steady
state conditions where the flow in the loops approaches zero. The
initial temperature was set to 285 ◦ C and it is assumed uniform
everywhere in the system. The void fraction in the loops and in the
downcomer was zero and the flow in the loops remains in single
phase during the transient. The initial and boundary conditions are
summarized in Table 1.
A CAD file is constructed for the RPV for a reference design of
the two-loop PWR nuclear power plant. Detailed description of
the adopted computational domain is shown in Fig. 1. The model
comprises a three-dimensional full description of the reactor pres-
sure vessel with the injection lines connected to the cold legs. The
ECC injection lines are connected at right angle to the sides of the
cold legs with the SIP and accumulator lines opposing each other.
The neutron shield is located in the active core area between the
core barrel and RPV walls which provides shielding for the com-
plete vessel 360◦ circumferential area. It represents an obstacle
to the flow in the downcomer and it has a significant influence
on the flow field and accordingly on the mixing characteristics of
the cold water falling down in the downcomer. Different details of
wall materials for the cold legs, RPV, core barrel and neutron shield
are represented in the computation with their detailed geometrical
information.
Table 1
Initial and boundary conditions for the CFD model.
Loop A Loop B
Accumulator, m [kg/s] 0 200
SIP, m [kg/s] 80 80
Accumulator, T [◦ C] – 10
SIP, T [◦ C] 30 30
Cold leg, m [kg/s] 0 0
Initial pressure [MPa] 6.9
Initial temperature [◦ C] 285
Void fraction [dimensionless] 0
Exact representation of the inlet nozzle to the RPV is consid-
ered in the model. In particular, the curved connection between
the inlet nozzle and the RPV is taken into account because it has a
strong influence on both the flow separation, and on the mechanical
integrity of this area. The hot leg is not considered in the com-
putational domain and the outlet boundary is placed at the RPV
outlet nozzle. For the cold legs the computational domain extends
for distance of two pipe diameters (2D) upstream of the injection
locations. In actual situations, part of the injected water will flow
to the pump volume at the beginning of the injection; however,
as a conservative assumption, the pump volume is not modeled
and all the flow is assumed to be eventually directed towards the
downcomer. Structural details in the core are not included in the
numerical simulations but a simplified porous media approach is
adopted. Because the ECC flow is much lower than the flow rate in
normal operation, the pressure drop in the core is very small and
accordingly, it is not expected that structural details in the core
would play an important role on mixing in the downcomer.
The CFD simulation for the case reported in Table 1 is performed
using ANSYS Fluent 15.0 CFD code (ANSYS Inc., 2013). The mesh
is built exclusively with blocked-structured hexahedral elements
following the BPG (Mahaffy et al., 2007) in order to have the flow
field aligned with the mesh in major parts of the domain. Proper
mesh refinements are needed in the zones relevant to PTS; i.e., in
the cold legs, downcomer and the lower plenum. Structured mesh
requires that the same mesh refinement spans through the whole
domain which will create excessive mesh numbers by placing fine
mesh in large volume zones like the reactor core and the upper
plenum where the details of the flow field is not very important.
In order to avoid this problem, mesh interfaces are created at non-
critical faces with different mesh refinements on each side. A mesh
interface is created at the inner wall of the core barrel where it
connects the solid zone of the core barrel with the fluid zone of the
core region for coupled heat transfer calculations as shown in Fig. 2.
Another mesh interface is placed at an interior flow surface at the
downcomer outlet.
The mesh has been created using ICEM CFD 15.0 (ANSYS Inc.,
2013) and it is composed of 5.1 million hexahedral cells. Most of
the mesh cells are concentrated in the cold legs, downcomer and
the lower plenum. The maximum aspect ratio is about 120 where
 V.F. González-Albuixech et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 291 (2015) 168–178 171

Fig. 2. Numerical grid for CFD.

Fig. 3. Geometry and FE mesh of the mechanical model.

the highest values are limited to mesh elements close to the solid
walls and the size expansion ratio is 1.1 based on the geometric
bunching laws. The average value of y+ at the RPV walls is about
100. The minimum mesh quality based on Jacobian determinants
for hexahedral is 0.2 where values close to 1 indicate perfectly reg-
ular elements. Mesh sensitivity of the results have been checked
by running the calculations on another coarser mesh of 3.3 mil-
lion cells showing insignificant difference in the obtained results.
Results of mesh sensitivity and effect of the turbulence model can
be found in Sharabi et al. (2014). The simulations are performed
using the fine mesh of 5.1 million cells.
Second order upwind schemes are used for discretization of con-
vective terms in different transport equations and a second order
implicit scheme for the transient terms with a time step of 2.5 ms.
Solid walls of RPV, neutron shield and core barrel are included using
conjugate heat transfer. The SST-kω turbulence model (Menter,
1994), which was commonly used in literature (Willemsen and
Komen, 2005, Scheuerer and Weis, 2012, Apanasevich et al., 2014)
and was shown to provide reasonable results, is used in the present
study. Turbulence production/dissipation due to buoyancy are
added as user defined function to account for the effect of thermal
stratification on turbulence (density difference is 25% and Froude
number Fr ∼0.5 suggesting dominant role of buoyancy effects at
the inlet nozzle and the downcomer). Pressure-velocity coupling
is achieved with the PISO algorithm (ANSYS Inc., 2013). Constant
pressure outlet boundary conditions are assumed at the hot-leg
outlets. Flat velocity profiles are assumed at the inlet section for the
ECC injection with a turbulent intensity of 3%. Physical properties
of water and RPV materials are given as polynomials of tempera-
ture. The maximum residuals for mass, momentum and turbulent
equations are 2 × 10−5 and 10−7 for the energy equation.
defines the cooling effect and the thermal loads, is interpolated onto
the FE mesh. The FE mesh is built using only quadratic hexahedron
elements to facilitate the interpolation of temperatures taken from
the CFD mesh. The mesh is chosen as structured and regular as
possible in order to approximate the geometry and to increase the
precision of the results. The discretization of the RPV geometry by
the finite element (FE) mesh is shown in Fig. 3. The element size is
defined as 1/5 of the RPV wall thickness.
The presence of a cladding has not been considered, as it is not
intended for structural integrity. The RPV is made of ferritic low
alloy steel for its medium strength, high toughness and good weld-
ability and corresponds to the typical steels used for older RPVs as
can be found in literature (González-Albuixech et al., 2014a,b; Qian
and Niffenegger, 2013b). The thermo-mechanical properties of the
material at different temperatures are listed in Table 2. The mean
coefficient of linear thermal expansion according to a reference
temperature of 20 ◦ C is used.
During the PTS the inner wall of the RPV is loaded by the pressure
history described in Fig. 4 and the thermal shock load shown in
Fig. 5. Note that the pressure is calculated by RELAP5, whereas the

3. Finite element model for stress calculation

The LEFM analysis is performed using the FEM code ABAQUS v

6.13 (Hibbitt et al., 2013). The RPV is reduced to a three-dimensional
model containing its most important geometric and mechanical
properties. The inner side of the RPV is assumed to be subjected to a
thermal shock caused by the falling plume of the emergency cooling
water. The time dependent three-dimensional temperature distri-
bution in the RPV calculated in the preceding CFD simulation, which Fig. 4. Inner wall pressure evolution on the PTS.
172 V.F. González-Albuixech et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 291 (2015) 168–178

Table 2
Thermo-mechanical properties of the RPV material.

Temperature [◦ C] 0 20 100 200 300 400

Elastic modulus [GPa] 206 206 199 190 181 172

Mean linear thermal expansion coefficient [10−6 C−1 ] 10.3 10.3 11.1 12.1 12.9 13.5
Thermal conductivity [W/(m K)] 44.4 44.4 44.4 43.2 41.8 39.4
Specific heat capacity [J/(Kg K)] 450 450 490 520 560 610
Density [103 Kg/m3 ] 7.6 7.6 7.6 7.6 7.6 7.6
Poisson’s ratio 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3
Stress free temperature 280.3

Fig. 5. Temperature evolution on the inner RPV wall, details of the plume.

Fig. 6. Global von Mises equivalent stresses evolution on the inner RPV wall for the first 540 s.
 V.F. González-Albuixech et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 291 (2015) 168–178 173

Fig. 7. Local stress components at 399 s. The maximum values corresponding to the location of postulated cracks as indicated by an ‘x’.

temperatures are results of the three-dimensional CFD calculations.

Only the first 540 s of the transient are plotted, this corresponds to
the time from the break opening till the end of the accumulator
injection (240 s is the total accumulator injection time).
Fig. 5 shows the change of the temperatures at the inner RPV wall
and in particular the oscillatory motion of the plume. In addition,
stratified flow conditions are predicted at the inlet nozzle creating
large temperature gradients on its circumferential area. Due to the
high flow rate from the injection lines, flow separation and reat-
tachment are observed below the inlet nozzle giving rise to cold
spots on the RPV walls. These three-dimensional effects cannot be
predicted using the one-dimensional analysis of the RELAP5 code.
RELAP5 predicts only an average temperature at each axial node of
the downcomer and therefore it is not considered conservative for
the prediction of thermal loads on the RPV walls.
In a first step of the mechanical calculation, the stresses were
evaluated in order to localize the maximum values and the cor-
responding time. Fig. 6 shows the evolution of the von Mises
equivalent stresses at different times. The locations of the evaluated
maximal von Mises stresses, which appear 400 s after the initia-
tion of the break in the hot leg, are indicated in Fig. 7, where also Fig. 8. Submodeled regions of the RPV.
the axial, radial and circumferential stress components are shown.
These locations are at the inlet and at a distance of about 0.35 times
for the analysis of cracked RPVs subjected to PTS loads (González-
the height (h) of the RPV away from the top of the RPV as shown
Albuixech et al., 2014a,b). Hence, the two identified critical zones
in Fig. 8. This location corresponds to the region where the flow
are analyzed applying the XFEM to the submodel for studying pos-
reattachment takes place and cold spots are predicted.
tulated flaws.
In a second step a FM analysis is performed. For this purpose
A semi-elliptical surface crack (shallow crack) is assumed. The
cracks are assumed at the critical locations in order to evaluate the
crack depth is two times the nondestructive testing limit, according
stress intensity KI as a function of time.
to the German standard KTA 3201.2 and corresponds to one tenth
of the RPV wall thickness. We mention that probabilistic FM anal-
4. Fracture mechanic analysis yses have shown that shallow cracks may contribute more to the
crack initiation probability than deep cracks, due to the fact that the
A submodeling technique was applied for the evaluation of KI neutron irradiation and PTS loading are more severe at the inner
by LEFM. Note that the boundary conditions applied to the sub- surface of the RPV. XFEM allows the definition of the crack shape
model are given by the preceding calculated global stresses. Since by a “cutting tool” as presented in Fig. 9.
the FE modeling of complicated crack geometries is a cumbersome
and difficult task, only simplified models or regions and cracks with
simple geometry are usually considered. The XFEM (Duflot, 2006;
Gravouil et al., 2002; Moës et al., 1999, 2002; Sukumar et al., 2000),
which was recently implemented in ABAQUS (Hibbitt et al., 2013)
is a technique that simplifies the modeling of cracks for numeri-
cal fracture analysis. Moreover, XFEM has been successfully used Fig. 9. “Cutting tool” for the geometric definition of the postulated crack.
174 V.F. González-Albuixech et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 291 (2015) 168–178

Fig. 10. Submodel mesh and crack details: (a) Inlet nozzle, (b) Wall region.

A detailed submodel is built for the two regions of the RPV
indicated in Fig. 8 (the core region and the inlet nozzle of loop
B) as can be seen in Fig. 10. The sizes of the submodel are
at least 5 times the crack size to minimize boundary effects.
The submodels have linear hexahedron mesh which is refined
where the cracks are located. Due to accuracy reasons the region
surrounding the crack is a regular mesh with an element size
smaller to 1/10 of the crack front curvature where the SIF
is extracted (González-Albuixech et al., 2013a,b, 2014a). Two
crack orientations are tested for each location, circumferential
and axial cracks, the scheme of each orientation is shown in
Fig. 10.
The integrity analysis relevant parameter, KI , at the deepest
crack point, is obtained by calculating the interaction integral
implemented in ABAQUS, Hibbitt et al. (2013).
5. Simplified model
In the following, a simplified model that considers only the belt
region of the RPV, which is irradiated by higher neutron fluence,
 V.F. González-Albuixech et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 291 (2015) 168–178 175

Fig. 11. Simplified RPV model geometry for axisymmetric boundary conditions.

Fig. 12. Overview of the mesh and crack details for axisymmetric model: (a) axial crack, (b) circumferential crack.

is used in order to be compared with the full three-dimensional
calculations of the whole RPV described in Section 4. The model
contains the most important geometric properties, as shown in
Fig. 11. The inner side of the RPV is assumed to be subjected to a
thermal shock caused by the cold plume from the emergency cool-
ing water. Although the cooling is not homogeneous but instead
typically has a plume shape coming from the inlet nozzles down to
the core region, the simplified numerical model assumes rotation-
ally symmetric and homogeneous cooling along the z-axis.
An overview of the mesh of linear hexahedron finite elements
used in the analysis is presented in Fig. 12. The model assumes
symmetries whenever possible, but the XFEM implementation in
ABAQUS (Hibbitt et al., 2013) does not allow symmetry planes
which contain crack planes. The analysis is similar to those
performed in González-Albuixech et al. (2014a). The mesh is
surrounding the crack regularly and very refined in order to obtain
accurate SIF using XFEM (González-Albuixech et al., 2013a,b).
The element size in this area is the same as that used in the 3D
176 V.F. González-Albuixech et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 291 (2015) 168–178

20
300 MLOCA

Water temperature [° C]
MLOCA

Pressure [MPa]
250 15

200
10

150
5
100

50 0

0 6000 12000 0 6000 12000

Time [second] Time [second]

(a) (b)

MLOCA
Heat transfer coefficient of

25
water-RPV [kW/m ⋅K]

20
2

15

10

0
0 6000 12000
Time [second]
(c)
Fig. 13. MLOCA transient: (a) water temperature history, (b) pressure history, (c) water heat transfer coefficient history.

Fig. 14. SIF comparison, three-dimensional model with temperature calculated by CFD and simplified model with axisymmetric temperature distribution taken from ref.
data: (a) axial crack, (b) circumferential crack.
 V.F. González-Albuixech et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 291 (2015) 168–178
Fig. 15. Comparison between SIFs of axial and circumferential cracks postulated at
the inlet nozzle and at the inner wall, at a distance of 0.35 h below the top.
submodels to allow a better comparison. The same mesh is used
in the heat transfer and in the structural mechanics calculations.
The history of the water temperature, pressure and heat trans-
fer coefficient between water and inner wall of the RPV for the
analyzed transient using reference data corresponding to the core
region are shown in Fig. 13 (González-Albuixech et al., 2014a;
Qian and Niffenegger, 2013b). Note that the temperature history
is intended to be representative for the cooling plume.
6. Analysis
In Fig. 14 we compare the mode I SIF, evaluated with the full
three-dimensional model in which CFD temperature results are
considered, with those from the simplified model using axisym-
metric temperature distribution taken from reference data. The
simplified model underestimates the SIF in comparison with the
three-dimensional model for the circumferential crack and over-
estimates it for the axial crack. It is shown that the simplified
model is not able to capture the behavior associated with the
realistic three-dimensional model. Furthermore, as the simplified
model underestimates some results in comparison with the realis-
tic three-dimensional model based on CFD temperature results, in
general it cannot be seen as conservative. The reason for the dif-
ference in SIF of the full 3D model and the simplified axisymmetric
model is due to different temperatures and to their axisymmetric
distribution in the simplified FE-model.
A complete three-dimensional model with the temperature field
obtained from realistic CFD computations allows also for compar-
ing SIFs of cracks placed at various locations on the RPV, as shown in
Fig. 15, for different crack orientations. Not surprisingly the crack
postulated at the inlet nozzle corner shows the largest SIF for an
axial crack.
7. Conclusions
Fracture mechanics analyses of a RPV model subjected to PTS
loads were performed using results from the thermal-hydraulic
system code RELAP5, reference data and extensive CFD sim-
ulations, followed by three-dimensional FE calculations. Such
three-dimensional calculations allow the realistic consideration
of local cooling effects (e.g., due to the cold water plume) and
therefore a more detailed analysis than with simplified models
which are often used for economic reasons. The comparison of the
177
obtained results has shown that simplified models, with axisym-
metric homogeneous temperature load and with restriction to the
core region with highest neutron fluence, are not always conser-
vative. It is therefore beneficial to perform full three-dimensional
CFD analyses, particularly for RPVs suffering from small safety mar-
gins, followed by structural mechanics analyses even though the
computational costs are higher. Such CFD calculations provide tran-
sient and oscillatory 3D temperature profile that cannot be fully
considered in simplified or analytical models. This results in more
realistic SIFs. The disadvantage in performing CFD calculations is
the enormous CPU-time required.
In the three-dimensional FM analyses the Extended Finite Ele-
ment Method (XFEM) was applied. This method allows a simplified
3D modeling of cracks at different locations and with arbitrary ori-
entation in the RPV. Highest stress intensities were evaluated due
to axial cracks at the inlet and at the RPV wall at a distance from
the top of the RPV of about 0.35 times the RPV height.
Acknowledgment
The authors are grateful for the financial support of the PISA
Project provided by the Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate
(ENSI) (DIS-Vertrag Nr. H-100668).
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