Pressurized water reactor lateral core response routine, FAMREC (Fuel Assembly Mechanical Response Code)

The nonlinear lateral mechanical response of pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies is defined by a computer code, Fuel Assembly Mechanical Response Code (FAMREC), which was generated from a series of existing subcodes. The basic subcodes used were taken directly from the FORTRAN Matrix Analysis (FORMA) library developed at the Martin Marietta Corporation, Denver Division. Several additional subcodes were incorporated into this library to allow for various methods of calculating fuel assembly impact forces and spacer grid crushing loads. A description, including some basic modeling assumptions, is presented for the class of problems which may be solved by the code. The various methods used for calculating fuel assembly impact forces and spacer grid crushing loads are outlined and a short discussion concerned with the overall convergence of the code is included. Results obtained from previous analyses using the code are considered and conclusions concerning the usefulness of these results are presented