Dynamic analysis of an industrial structure with fluid-structure interaction

The present paper deals with the dynamic analysis of a nuclear reactor subjected to a shock loading with fluid-structure interaction modeling. The general framework of the study is that of linear vibrations, which are investigated for coupled fluid-structure problems. From a methodological point of view, energy deformation and modal mass calculation are exposed for elasto-acoustic systems. From an industrial point of view, the influence of elasto-acoustic coupling effects are highlighted for the studied structure. The dynamic analysis of the coupled system is carried out with various procedures (static, spectral and temporal methods), which are exposed and compared. As a general result, the spectral method is proved to be the most effective for the industrial problem. From the numerical point of view, the discretization procedure is based on a finite element method for the coupled problem, using a displacement and pressure-displacement potential coupled formulation with axi-symmetric representation of the problem unknowns. A finite element code is developed within MATLAB for the specific study, the numerical calculations presented in the paper are used as reference test cases for integration of the (u,p,φ) formulation in the commercial finite element code Ansys. (author)