Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170

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Applied Thermal Engineering

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

Research Paper

Thermal hydraulic and stress coupling analysis for AP1000 Pressurized

Thermal Shock (PTS) study under SBLOCA scenario
Mingjun Wang, Leyuan Bai, Lianfa Wang, Suizheng Qiu ⇑, Wenxi Tian, G.H. Su
Department of Nuclear Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

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

Article history: Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) analysis for AP1000 under Small Break Loss of Coolant Accident
Received 21 January 2017 (SBLOCA) was performed in this paper. The three-dimensional models of Direct Vessel Injection (DVI)
Revised 21 April 2017 line, Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) nozzles and downcomer were established. The mathematic models
Accepted 23 April 2017
of three-dimensional thermal hydraulic and stress analysis were introduced. The numerical simulation
Available online 25 April 2017
of thermal-hydraulic mixing was carried out using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method under
SBLOCA scenario. It was found that the temperature distribution in RPV downcomer depended on the
Keywords:
injection velocity relative to cross-flow greatly. The RPV cooling center region was moving up with the
AP1000
Pressurized Thermal Shock
increase of injection velocity. The temperature distribution was non-uniform along the circumferential
Thermal hydraulics orientation on RPV wall and the great temperature gradient was generated between the cooling center
Stress analysis and other regions. The AP1000 RPV stress analysis was performed using Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
LOCA method following thermal-hydraulic mixing study. Results show that the most critical zone was located
in the DVI nozzle chamfering under SBLOCA transient. The stress was mainly induced by high tempera-
ture gradient and the maximum stress occured when the wall temperature has the largest reduce rate.
This work is meaningful for the structure integrity study of AP1000 nuclear power plant.
Ó 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
The Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) is a very important equip-
ment in a nuclear power plant, the structure integrity of which
should be maintained throughout the whole plant life. The reactor
RPV may suffer high thermal stress with extremely temperature
gradient led by rapid cooling under the condition of Loss of Coolant
Accident (LOCA) transient [1]. The critical operation condition,
including high temperature and internal pressure, also brings great
threat to RPV structure integrity. The combination of high internal
pressure and great thermal stress causes possible crack propaga-
tion through the vessel wall in case that some defects exist in
RPV. Aside from that, the material properties are subject to degra-
dation during the reactor operation by neutron irradiation, fatigue,
thermal ageing and other mechanisms, reducing the resistance of
RPV against brittle fracture.
The RPV stress analysis should acquire necessary input bound-
ary conditions from detailed three-dimensional thermal hydraulic
study. With the rapid development of Computational Fluid Dynam-
ics (CFD) method, the three-dimensional coolant mixing thermal
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: szqiu@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (S. Qiu).
hydraulic study in RPV becomes a reality. Reyes et al. [2] carried
out the coolant mixing experiment based on APEX facility. They
also performed three-dimensional numerical thermal hydraulic
simulation using CFD method. Results show the capacity of CFD
method for coolant mixing study. Toppila et al. [3] modeled the
three-dimensional coolant mixing in cold leg and downcomer
using FLUENT code. The coolant mixing numerical calculation
accuracy was demonstrated through the comparison with FORTUM
experiment. However, the solid and fluid coupling heat transfer
was not considered during their work. Willemsen et al. [4] utilized
CFX code to perform the similar cooling mixing thermal hydraulic
study. They compared their numerical resutls with the UPTF exper-
imental data. Results also demonstrated the feasibility of CFD
method. Also, Rohde et al. [5] demonstrated the feasibility of CFX
and FLUENT codes by comparing their numerical resutls with the
ROCOM and FORTUM experiments. The CFD calculated results
were mostly within the uncertainty bands of experiments. In
sum, the reliability of CFD method has been verified widely around
the world.
The coupled multi-physics approach with high fidelity simula-
tors is regarded as one of the most promising directions to realize
the improvement of computational accuracy for nuclear power
system research. The Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.04.106
1359-4311/Ó 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
 M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170 159

phenomenon is involved in strong coupling between thermal @ * * *

ðqU Þ þ r  ðqU  U Þ
hydraulic and structure analysis. The coupling work could avoid @s
unnecessary calculation errors and provide more accurate and reli- * * T
¼ r  ½ðl þ lt ÞrU  þ r  ½ðl þ lt ÞrU 
rP0 þ B ð2Þ
able results. For multi-physics coupling study, Huang et al. [6] used
2
CFX code and FEM code to investigate the molten iron and the j
lt ¼ C l q
resulting thermal stress imposed on reactor impeller. The results e
including temperature, flow field and thermal stress under extre- where P 0 is the turbulent pressure, lt is the turbulent viscosity, C l is
mely high temperatures were in strong agreement with empirical the turbulent constant.
data. Sun et al. [7] established a simplified steam generator phys- Energy conservation equation:
ical model and the thermal hydraulic characteristic in the steam 
 
generator was achieved using CFD method. The thermal analysis @ l lt
ðqTÞ ¼ r  þ r T þ ST
and static structural analysis were conducted through Flow Solid @s Pr rT ð3Þ
Interaction (FSI) in the regard of influence of fluid flow and heat lc p
Pr ¼
transfer. The thermal stress and mechanical stress under the criti- k
cal conditions like temperature load and pressure load were where Plr represents the diffusion caused by molecular motion,
obtained.
while rlTt represents the diffusion caused by turbulent pulsating.
For stress analysis, Mukhopadhyay et al. [8] performed the
three dimensional elastic fracture studies for four-loop Pressurized The j
e turbulence equation:

 
Water Reactor (PWR) vessel weld region under SBLOCA and @ * l
LBLOCA transient scenarios. They demonstrated that the surface ðqkÞ þ r  ðq U kÞ ¼ r l þ t rk þ P k
qe
@s rk
crack stress intensity factor was nearly two times as the embed- 
 
@ * lt e
ding crack stress intensity factor. The LBLOCA brought greater ðqeÞ þ r  ðq U eÞ ¼ r l þ re þ ðck Pk
ce qeÞ
@s re k ð4Þ
threat to RPV than SBLOCA. Siegele et al. [9] carried out the three
* * * 2 * *
dimensional elastic fracture studies for cold legs. The surface crack Pk ¼ lt r U ðr U þrU T Þ
r U ð3lt r U þqkÞ þ Pkb
and embedding crack with different crack lengths were considered 3
lt
in their work. Ma et al. [10] calculated the thermal stress of tube Pkb ¼ rq
following the thermal hydraulic study through different numerical
q
simulation methods, conducting mechanical strength analyses. Where k is the turbulence pulsation kinetic energy, e is the
The AP1000 is a two-loop 1000 MW advanced passive pressur- kinetic energy dissipation rate, rk and re are the turbulence con-
ized water reactor developed by Westinghouse. It uses passive stant, P k is the viscosity force, P kb is the buoyancy.
safety systems to provide significant and measurable improve- For solid heat conduction model, it could be handled as heat
ments in plant simplification, safety, reliability, investment costs. conduction without heat source and the heat conduction differen-
The AP1000 passive safety injection system is the most important tial equation was shown as:
protection system during LOCA and it could provide emergency

@T k
cooling water to reactor vessel passively through Direct Vessel ¼r rT ð5Þ
Injection (DVI) line, which is connected to the RPV directly [11,12]. @t qc
The structure integrity of PRV is of great importance for AP1000 where the k is the solid body thermal conductivity coefficient, the c
reactor operation. As the PTS phenomenon could bring great threat is the solid body specific heat.
to the structure integrity, so the AP1000 nuclear power plant PTS
study under SBLOCA scenario was performed in this paper. The 2.2. Stress analysis model
RPV model and the DVI line were modeled and the thermal
hydraulic and stress analysis were carried out using three dimen- Any cell in the object with outside load has fifteen unknown
sional methods. variables in elastic model. They are six stress components
rij ði; j ¼ 1; 2; 3Þ, six strain components eij ði; j ¼ 1; 2; 3Þ and three
2. PTS model displacements ui ði ¼ 1; 2; 3Þ. In order to get the solid stress and
strain fields, it is necessary to solve three equilibrium equations,
The PTS theoretical model mainly includes thermal hydraulic six constitutive equations and six geometric equations.
model and stress analysis model. The thermal mixing model is The equilibrium equations are internal stress constraint equa-
composed of thermal mixing model and solid heat conduction tions derived by the force and torque balance.
model, while the stress analysis model contains elastic model 8 @ rx @ syx @szx
>
> þ @y þ @z þ Bx ¼ 0
and plastic model. < @x
@ ry @s @s
þ @xxy þ @zzy þ By ¼ 0 ð6Þ
>
>
@y
2.1. Thermal hydraulic model : @ rz @ sxz @ syz
@z
þ @x þ @y þ Bz ¼ 0

For three-dimensional thermal mixing model, the j
e turbu- The constitutive equations describe the relationship between
lence model was employed. The mass conservation equation, material stress and strain.
momentum conservation equation, energy conservation equation
r ¼ rðeÞ ð7Þ
and j
e turbulence equation were established for fluid region
[13]. The geometric equations are used to describe the relationship
Mass conservation equation between strain and displacement.
8  
@q *
þ r  ðq U Þ ¼ 0 ð1Þ
>
>
>
ex ¼ @u
@x
cyz ¼ 12 @@zv þ @w
@y
@t < 
ey ¼ @@yv czx ¼ 12 @w
@x
þ @u
@z ð8Þ
* >
>  
where q is the coolant density, U is the coolant velocity. >
: e ¼ @w c ¼ 1 @u þ @ v
z @z xy 2 @y @x
Momentum conservation equation:
160
The AP1000 pressure vessel material is SA508-3 and the curves
of thermal expansion coefficient, thermal conductivity, elastic
modulus and poisson’s ratio are shown as Fig. 1.
When the load is too large, the material stress may be beyond
the yield limit, leading to the irreversible plastic deformation.
The commonly used plastic yield criteria includes Tresca yield cri-
terion, Mises yield criterion and twin shear stress yield criterion.
The Mises yield criterion was employed in this section and shown
as:
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
1h
ðr1
r2 Þ2 þ ðr2
r3 Þ2 þ ðr3
r1 Þ2 >
2 n
where r1 ; r2 ; r3 are the main stresses,
the safety factor.
3. Thermal hydraulic study for PTS
3.1. Transient description
The thermal hydraulic boundary condition for PTS study was
achieved from the one dimensional safety analysis for PWR. The
typical transient simulation method could be found in the authors’
M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170
previous paper [14], including system modeling, steady state cal-
culation and transient simulation. In this section, the logic of typ-
ical SBLOCA scenario with 0.093m2 break was described. This
safety analysis work was performed in the paper published in
the same research group [15]. The reactor shut down with the pro-
tection system signal while the PZR pressure was lower than
12.41 MPa. Then the core make-up water tank and heat removal
systems were triggered while receiving the PZR pressure low-low
signal. The ACC began to inject cold water into primary loop while
the reactor coolant system pressure was lower than 4.93 MPa. The
i r
y PTS related thermal hydraulic parameter variations of AP1000
ð9Þ
SBLOCA, including primary loop pressure, flow rates and coolant
temperatures in the primary loop and the DVI line, were used in
ry is the yield strength, n is
the following 3-D thermal hydraulic study.
3.2. Three-dimensional thermal hydraulic analysis
The detailed three-dimensional thermal hydraulic analysis pro-
vides the necessary inputs for stress analysis. The SBLOCA transient
always sustains more than ten thousand seconds, while the coolant
mixing phenomenon occurs only tens of seconds. We assumed that
the main boundary conditions during the coolant mixing process
Fig. 1. The thermal elastic properties of AP1000 pressure vessel material.
Fig. 2. AP1000 vessel and DVI geometry.
 M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170 161

are not varied sharply and the coolant mixing process could be Table 1
divided into a number of quasi steady states. Mesh type.

Type Cells Nodes

3.2.1. Geometry and griding 1 311,074 321,504
According to the symmetries of structure and load, the quarter 2 406,640 41,648
of RPV model was selected and established. The thermal hydraulic 3 514,316 538,726
4 603,254 627,644
model consisted of solid region and fluid region. The fluid region
included the RPV inlet and outlet, downcomer and DVI line, while
the solid region included the main pipes, nozzles and RPV wall.
Fig. 2 shows the AP1000 vessel and DVI geometry and Fig. 3 shows
the CAD models of AP1000 PTS study.
The fluid mesh and solid mesh were generated separately con-
sidering the different grid requirement of thermal hydraulic study
and stress analysis. The interface was used to exchange the energy
between the two regions. The fully hexahedron mesh was gener-
ated in this model, shown as Fig. 4.
The full hexahedron mesh was adopted during the thermal
hydraulic calculation in this paper. Four type meshes (shown in
Table 1) were generated and the grid independent solution was
achieved through mesh sensitivity study. The velocity in cold leg
nozzle under AP1000 normal operation condition was taken as
the reference parameters for verification, shown as Fig. 5. At last,
the mesh Type 3 was regarded as the grid independent solution.

3.2.2. Boundary conditions

The hot water and cold water flow to RPV downcomer through
cold legs and DVI line, respectively. They mixes together in the
downcomer and flow out through the bottom of downcomer. The
Fig. 5. The velocity distribution in the inlet nozzle.
inlet boundary conditions were applied in the cold leg and DVI line

Fig. 3. CAD models of vessel and DVI.

(a) Front view (b) Top view

Fig. 4. Fluid region mesh (left) and solid region mesh (right).
162 M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170

with the 5% turbulence intensity. The outlet boundary condition

was set at the bottom of downcomer. The top of ring cavity was
set with opening boundary condition and the coolant temperature
in upper plenum was assumed to the same as the coolant temper-
ature in cold leg.
The adiabatic boundary condition was set on RPV outside sur-
face because the vessel was surrounded by the insulation layer
and the heat loss could be ignored. The symmetric boundary con-
ditions were assumed at DVI line and hot leg inlet due to geomet-
rical symmetry. The detailed boundary conditions are shown as
Fig. 6.

3.2.3. Thermal hydraulic results

In the axial flow direction, the coolant mixing phenomenon
could be defined into near wall flow, injection flow, penetration
flow and jet flow (shown as Fig. 7) based on the value of k, which
was defined as:

k ¼ U i =U d ð10Þ Fig. 7. Four coolant mixing patterns.

where U i is DVI coolant flow velocity, U d is downcomer coolant
flow velocity. With the full development turbulent flow and uni-
form flow assumptions, U d was defined as:

U d ¼ Q c =Ad ð11Þ

where Q c is the mass flow rate, Ad is the downcomer annulus area.

The variation of k with time was shown as Fig. 8 under the con-
dition of AP1000 SBLOCA scenario.
The DVI water changed flow direction and flowed downstream
along the RPV wall in case that k was lower than 0.5. The DVI cool-
ant injected into downcomer and mixed with downcomer coolant
in case that k was between 1 and 10. The DVI coolant penetrated
the downcomer cross-section completely and contacted with the
core barrel when k was about 10. The DVI water would form the
downcomer cross flow phenomenon in case that k was larger than
10.
The three dimensional calculation results show that coolant
mixing flow was near wall flow in the first 25 s and it became
injection flow in the next 20 s. From 50 s to 1300 s, it belonged
to the jet flow with cross flow, while it was penetration flow with-
out cross flow at about 1300 s (see Fig. 9).
In downcomer, the velocity filed formed typical ‘‘arch” flow pat-
Fig. 8. Variation of k with time under SBLOCA condition.
tern due to the influence of cross flow. Some vortex would be

(a) Top view (b) Front view

Fig. 6. Boundary conditions.
 M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170 163

(a) t=20s (b) t=30s

(c) t=50s (d) t=1300s

Fig. 9. Coolant velocity fields at different time.

generated because of the interaction between injection water and
downcomer coolant. The vortex mixed with the ‘‘arch” flow, as
shown in Fig. 10.
Fig. 10. The radial flow pattern in downcomer.
The ‘‘arch” flow pattern was also determined by k. Fig. 11
shows the ‘‘arch” flowed with different k and Fig. 12 shows
the variations of ‘‘arch” flow width with time in case of
AP1000 SBLOCA scenario.
Fig. 13 shows temperature distribution in downcomer wall
at different time. As illustrated in the figure, from 0 s to 50 s,
the injection coolant would flow downstream with the primary
loop coolant before fully mixing due to small injection coolant
velocity, leading to narrow cooling region in downcomer wall.
At the time from 50 s to 200 s, the injection water with high
velocity impacted with the core barrel and then returned to
downcomer wall with the increase of injection velocity. The
secondary impact jet flow occured near with the injection noz-
zle, causing fast cooling and large cooling region. For the time
200 s to 1300 s, the secondary impact jet flow position gradu-
ally moved down with the decrease of injection velocity and
the wall cooling center moved from the injection nozzle to
the vessel lower part. For the time 1400 s to 2000 s, the wall
cooling center moved up and cooling area increased due to
the increase of k.
164 M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170
a λ = 5.5
Fig. 11. The ‘‘arch” flows with different k.
Fig. 12. Variations of ‘‘arch” flow width with time.
Therefore, the RPV wall temperature distribution was related to
the injection flow velocity. The DVI nozzle would not be cooled
well in case that the injection flow rate was low. The DVI nozzle
would get sufficient cooling gradually and the cooling center
moved up as the injection flow rate increased.
In order to investigate temperature field characteristics in RPV
wall, three locations of axial direction, including DVI nozzle zone
(Z = 2.6 m), weld zone (Z = 3.6 m) and vessel zone (Z = 4.5 m), and
two parts of circumference, cooling center region and outer region,
were defined, respectively.
Fig. 14 shows the heat transfer coefficients of different locations
in the cooling central region. From 0 s to 50 s, the wall surface heat
transfer coefficient was very large due to the high downcomer flow
rate. And the heat transfer coefficient decreased as the downcomer
flow rate reduced. From 80 s to 200 s, heat transfer coefficient in
the DVI nozzle increased rapidly. From 200 s to 1000 s, the heat
b λ = 20 c λ = 35
transfer coefficient was becoming constant due to the stable down-
comer and injection flow velocity. From 1000 s to 1300 s, the wall
heat transfer coefficient decreased with the decrease of injection
velocity. At last, the downcomer wall heat transfer coefficient
was relatively stable.
Fig. 15 shows the downcomer wall temperature variations in
the cooling central region and the outer region of cooling center.
The variations of temperature in downcomer wall cooling center
was similar with that of the cold water temperature from DVI line,
while the variations of temperature in outer region of cooling cen-
ter was similar with that of the downcomer coolant temperature.
The maximum wall temperature difference between the cooling
center and the outer region is about 81 °C at 200 s.
4. Stress analysis
The main purpose of this section was to achieve RPV stress dis-
tribution under PTS transient, which would be used for RPV struc-
tural integrity analysis. The temperature and pressure results
obtained from the above thermal hydraulic study were taken as
the load and inputs for ANSYS APDL analysis.
4.1. The calculation model
The stress analysis geometry model was the same with the solid
model in thermal hydraulic study due to the uniform mesh
requirement, as shown in Fig. 16. The eight node solid structure
unit SOLID185 was selected and the multiple linear kinematic
hardening was employed for the material plastic modeling.
According to the symmetry of structure and load, the symmetric
boundary condition was applied in the hot leg end (Y = 0) and the
DVI nozzle (X = 0), respectively. The pressure boundary condition
was applied in RPV wall. The mixing temperature calculated in
above sections was loaded on the whole structure. The simply sup-
ported boundary condition was applied in RPV bottom support
structure. The uniform stress distribution was assumed for pipe
 M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170 165

a t=50s b t=120s

c t=450s d t=1100s

e t=1300s f t=1400s
Fig. 13. Temperature distribution in downcomer wall at different time.
166 M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170

connection cross section and the average tensile stress was shown
as the following equations.
The cold leg tensile stress rc is:
2
dc
rc ¼ P ¼ 1:93P ð12Þ
4dc  ðdc þ dc Þ

where P is the primary loop pressure.

The hot leg tensile stress is rh is:
2
dh
rh ¼ P ¼ 2:15P ð13Þ
4dh  ðdh þ dh Þ

where di is the inner diameter of DVI line, the di in the wall thick-
ness DVI pipe.
The DVI line tensile stress ri is:
2
di
ri ¼ P ¼ 0:99P ð14Þ
Fig. 14. Variations of heat transfer coefficient of different locations in cooling 4di  ðdi þ di Þ
central region.
The shell tensile stress rsh is:
2
dsh1
rsh1 ¼ P ¼ 4:03P
4dsh1  ðdsh1 þ dsh1 Þ
2
ð15Þ
dsh2
rsh2 ¼ P ¼ 4:73P
4dsh2  ðdsh2 þ dsh2 Þ
where dsh1 is the inner diameter of upper shell, dsh2 is the inner
diameter of lower shell, dsh1 is the thickness of upper shell, dsh2 is
the thickness of lower shell (see Fig. 17).

4.2. Mesh sensitivity

The hexahedron mesh was adopted and the mesh sensitivity

was also necessary for stress analysis to verify the grid indepen-
dence. The displacement in the FEM was the original solution. Both
the stress and strain were derived from the displacement. The dis-
placements of hot leg nozzle and cold leg nozzle under the normal
operation condition were chosen as the target parameters. Figs. 18
and 19 show the displacement variations with different mesh
quantities. As shown in the figures, the mesh Type 2 was selected
Fig. 15. Variations of downcomer wall temperature with time.
as the grid independent solution (see Table 2).

(a) Front view (b) Top view

Fig. 16. The mesh diagram for stress analysis.
 M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170 167

(a) Top view (b) Side view

Fig. 17. Boundary conditions for stress analysis.

Table 2
The solid mesh types for stress analysis.

Type Cells Nodes

1 57,074 69,254
2 86,640 98,416
3 103,863 123,158

4.3. Stress analysis results

Figs. 20 and 21 show the RPV temperature and stress distribu-

tions in the normal operation at 0 s, respectively. The stress con-
centration occurred on the joint part between main pipe and
RPV. The local chamfering played an important role in smoothing
stress and reducing stress concentration. The stresses at the joint
part between hot leg, cold leg, DVI line and RPV were 385 MPa,
351 MPa and 322 MPa, respectively. The maximum stress appeared
at the joint part between hot leg pipe and RPV due to the largest
temperature gradient.
The stress distributions of key parts, including hot leg nozzle,
Fig. 18. Variations of displacement in different cold leg nozzle positions with three
mesh types.
cold leg nozzle, DVI nozzle, weld joint and vessel part, were studied

Fig. 19. Variations of displacement in different hot leg nozzle positions with three
mesh types. Fig. 20. The RPV temperature distribution in normal operation condition at 0 s.
168 M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170

in detail under SBLOCA condition. The variations of primary loop

pressure and stresses in hot leg nozzle and cold leg nozzle cham-
fering with time were shown as Figs. 22 and 23. The stress
decreased rapidly within the first 200 s after SBLOCA and then kept
a small scale fluctuation, the trend of which was similar to the pri-
mary loop pressure. In the initial stage, the stress was mainly
caused by internal pressure and the cold water from emergency
cooling system would not reach the RPV.
The variation of injection flow relative velocity temperature and
stress in DVI nozzle chamfering with time is shown as Fig. 24. The
stress variation had the same trend with the injection flow relative
temperature, which was defined as the absolute value of difference
between downcomer wall temperature and injection water tem-
perature. In the normal operation condition, the DVI nozzle stress
was caused by the inner pressure and stress was 263 MPa. The DVI
nozzle stress decreased to 127 MPa with the decrease of primary
loop pressure in the first 20 s. Then the stress began to increase
because the cold water from the emergency cooling system occu-
pied DVI line in the next 100 s. The maximum stress was about
532 MPa at 120 s. The CMT water temperature increased with time
and the corresponding stress decreased from 120 s to 1000 s. After
Fig. 21. The RPV stress distribution in normal operation condition at 0 s.
the CMT drained, the IRWST water began to flow into RPV through
the DVI line, leading to the stress increase. Finally, the DVI nozzle
stress declined gradually with the decrease of RPV downcomer
wall temperature.
The vessel was divided into several parts in order to study the
vessel stress distribution. The three angles, 10°, 45° and 80°, were
selected in this paper, shown as Fig. 25.

Fig. 22. Variations of stress in hot leg nozzle chamfering with time.

Fig. 24. Variations of stress in DVI nozzle chamfering with time.

Fig. 23. Variations of stress in cold leg nozzle chamfering with time. Fig. 25. Different locations during vessel stress analysis.
 M. Wang et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 158–170 169

the thermal shock on different parts of RPV varied greatly. The

maximum stress in the DVI nozzle under the SBLOCA scenario
was far higher than that under the normal operation condition,
while the stresses in the weld joint region and vessel under
the SBLOCA scenario were lower than that under the normal
operation condition.

5. Conclusions

The RPV PTS phenomenon of AP1000 was studied under the

SBLOCA scenario using thermal-stress coupling method. The cool-
ant thermal mixing characteristics and the stress distribution of
RPV were achieved. Some main conclusions include:

(1) Different flow patterns, including near wall flow pattern,

Fig. 26. Variations of stress on weld joint with time in different positions.
Variation of stress on the weld joint with time in different posi-
tions was shown in Fig. 26. The stress was larger in the hot leg noz-
zle than that in the DVI line nozzle under the normal operation
condition. In case of SBLOCA scenario, the stress was the largest
in the wall cooling center region. The wall cooling center moved
to hot leg nozzle along the circumference with the increase of
injection coolant velocity. The stress reached the maximum value
in the angle 45 at 120 s. The wall cooling center was at the position
of angle 10 from 120 s to 1000 s. Then from 1000 s to 1300 s, the
stress distribution along the circumference was uniform due to
the low injection coolant velocity. At last, the wall cooling center
moved to position of angle 10 with the increase of the injection
water velocity. During the whole process, the position of angle
80 kept outside of the cooling center and the stress was always a
low value.
The variation of stress in vessel was similar with that in weld
joint, as shown in Fig. 27. However, the vessel could have a more
uniform cooling than that in the weld joint during the whole tran-
sient. The maximum stresses for the vessel and weld zone are
160 MPa and 185 MPa, respectively.
In sum, the stress variation trend in RPV different parts were
similar under the SBLOCA scenario. The stress was caused mainly
by the primary loop pressure at the beginning and then the
injection water would affect the stress distribution and became
a main factor due to the thermal stress influence. However,
Acknowledgments
injection flow pattern, penetration flow pattern and jet flow
pattern, were defined during the coolant mixing process
based on different velocity ratio k.
(2) The injection flow presented ‘‘arch” flow and the size of
‘‘arch” increased with the increase of ratio k.
(3) The RPV wall temperature distribution was related to the
injection relative velocity. The core barrel temperature was
low, while the near wall region of DVI line was high in case
of high injection relative velocity. The wall temperature con-
tours appeared as a ‘‘parabola” shape. The RPV wall temper-
ature distribution in circumferential direction presented
zoning phenomenon. The temperature in cooling center
region was lower than that in the outside of cooling center
region.
(4) In the normal operation condition, the RPV stress was
mainly caused by internal pressure. The stress concentration
appeared on the joint of RPV with main pipes and the max-
imum stress appeared at hot leg nozzle. Under the SBLOCA
scenario, the influence of temperature on the stress distribu-
tion increased obviously and the thermal stress was becom-
ing a key factor.
(5) The maximum thermal stress appeared at the joint of DVI
line and RPV in the event of SBLOCA and it was about
532 MPa, which was far higher than the value in the normal
operation condition. The maximum stresses for the vessel
and weld zone were 160 MPa and 185 MPa, respectively.
The stress distribution was mainly determined by the injec-
tion water relative temperature.

This research has been supported by the China Postdoctoral

Science Foundation (No. 2016M600797).

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