Vibration behaviour of PWR reactor internals. Model experiments and analysis

In the late 1971, the CEA and FRAMATOME decided to undertake a comprehensive joint program of studying the vibration behaviour of PWR internals of the 900 MWe, 50 cycle, 3 loop reactor series being built by FRAMATOME in France. The PWR reactor internals are submitted to several sources of excitation during normal operation. Two main sources of excitation may effect the internals behaviour: the large flow turbulences which could generate various instabilities such as: vortex shedding; the pump pressure fluctuations which could generate acoustic noise in the circuit at frequencies corresponding to shaft speed frequencies or blade passing frequencies, and their respective harmonics. The flow induced vibrations are of complex nature and the approach selected, for this comprehensive program, is semi-empirical and based on both theoretical analysis and experiments on a reduced scale model and full scale internals. (Auth.)