In this paper, the elastic-plastic finite element analysis results according to the analysis conditions of the piping system under the seismic loading and internal pressures were analyzed, Through this, the optimal finite element modeling guideline fo...
In this paper, the elastic-plastic finite element analysis results according to the analysis conditions of the piping system under the seismic loading and internal pressures were analyzed, Through this, the optimal finite element modeling guideline for the strain-based seismic assessment procedure of the piping system was presented.
Since the existing stress-based seismic assessment procedure of the piping system of a nuclear power plant under seismic loading shows excessive conservatism, research on strain-based seismic assessment procedures to improve this is being actively conducted. The strain-based assessment uses equivalent plastic strain as the main factor, which is calculated through elastic-plastic finite element analysis. In particular, in the case of equivalent plastic strain, it tends to be sensitive depending on the analysis variables due to the nonlinearity of elastic-plastic finite element analysis. In addition, elastic-plastic finite element analysis takes a lot of time compared to elastic analysis. Therefore, a finite element analysis guideline that considers the convergence and efficiency of elastic-plastic finite element analysis is required for reliable strain-based seismic assessment of piping systems.
In this paper, to present a modeling guideline for efficient elastic-plastic finite element analysis of piping systems under the seismic loading and internal pressures, the acceleration, strain, and equivalent plastic strain results according to finite element types and densities were compared. Based on the seismic test information of the piping system performed at BARC, the elastic-plastic finite element analysis was performed applying the guideline presented in the JSME Code Case, and the density of the quadratic solid element that can obtain the sufficiently converged elastic-plastic finite element analysis result was reviewed. Then, for the efficiency of the elastic-plastic finite element analysis, the analysis results according to the linear solid element types were compared, and the linear solid element that could obtain the analysis results sufficiently comparable to that of the quadratic solid element was selected. In addition, by increasing the density of the selected linear solid element, reviewed the element density that can obtain the results of acceleration, strain, and equivalent plastic strain converging to the quadratic solid element.
Through the above study, this paper presented a finite element modeling guideline that can efficiently obtain converged results from elastic-plastic finite element analysis of piping systems under seismic load and internal pressure. It is expected that the results of this study will enable stable and efficient strain-based seismic evaluation of piping systems.