Contribution of CAD and PLM Research Reactors Design and Construction

As all the reactors, the main stakes in the engineering of design and construction of the research reactors consist of the management and sharing of the technical data, the functional, physical and contractual interfaces data between the various contributors on the whole designs and construction cycle project. For 40 years, AREVA TA designs and builds reactors. Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools were introduced for 30 years into the engineering processes of AREVA TA, completed for 15 years by Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tools. For 15 years AREVA TA pursues the integration since the feasibility of its newest Information Technologies (IT). In the first part, the paper presents IN the second part, the paper presents how the schematics and CAD tools support the engineering processes during the different phases of the project. CAD was used during the studies and now supports the management of the layout and design studies, including interfaces between suppliers, up to the constitution of the as built CAD mock-up. In the third part, the paper presents the relations between the various tools and the PLM solution implemented by AREVA TA to ensure the consistency between all tools and data for the benefit of the project