• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.590-599
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• 2010

Recently, efficient operation and practical management of power plants have become important issues in the nuclear industry. In particular, typical aging parameters such as stress and cumulative usage factor should be determined accurately for continued operation of a nuclear power plant beyond design life. However, most of the major components have been designed via conservative codes based on a 2-D concept, which do not take into account exact boundary conditions and asymmetric geometries. The present paper aims to suggest an effective fatigue evaluation methodology that uses a prototype of the integrated model and its transfer functions. The validity of the integrated 3-D Finite Element (FE) model was proven by comparing the analysis results of individual FE models. Also, mechanical and thermal transfer functions, known as Green's functions, were developed for the integrated model with the standard step input. Finally, the stresses estimated from the transfer functions were compared with those obtained from detailed 3-D FE analyses results at critical locations of the major components. The usefulness of the proposed fatigue evaluation methodology can be maximized by combining it with an on-line monitoring system, and this combination, will enhance the continued operations of old nuclear power plants.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.38-47
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• 1986

A statistical procedure, which uses response surface method and Monte Carlo simulation technique, is proposed for analyzing the thermal margin of light water reactor core. The statistical thermal margin analysis method performs the best.estimate thermal margin evaluation by the probabilistic treatment of uncertainties of input parameters. This methodology is applied to KNU-1 core thermal margin analysis under the steady state nominal operating condition. Also discussed are the comparisons with conventional deterministic method and Improved Thermal Design Procedure of Westinghouse. It is deduced from this study that the response surface method is useful for performing the statistical thermal margin analysis and that thermal margin improvement is assured through this procedure.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.237-246
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• 1994

A high flow critical heat flux (CHF) correlation, based on the single-pin CHF experimental data for finned and unfinned heated rods, was developed for the thermal-hydraulic design and safety analysis of the Korea Multi-purpose Research Reactor (KMRR) core. The correlation consists of dimensionless parameters such as Reynolds number, thermodynamic equilibrium quality, liquid-to-vapor density ratio, and hydraulic equivalent diameter ratio. The fin effect was taken into account in the correlation by a finned-to-unfinned heated perimeter ratio. The effects of a cold wall and non-uniform axial power distribution ore discussed to verify the applicability of the single-pin based correlation to the KMRR fuel bundle. The correlation limit departure from nucleate boiling ratio (DNBR) was determined as 1.44 from the statistical analysis of the CHF data.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.7
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• pp.2251-2260
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• 2021

The motion control of the divertor maintenance system of the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) was studied in this paper, in which CFETR Multi-Functional Maintenance Platform (MFMP) was simplified as a parallel robot for the convenience of theoretical analysis. In order to design the motion controller of parallel robot, the kinematics analysis of parallel robot was carried out. After that, the dynamic modeling of the hydraulic system was built. As the large variation of heavy payload on MFMP and highly nonlinearity of the system, A Fuzzy-PID controller was built for self-tuning PID controller parameters by using Fuzzy system to achieve better performance. In order to test the feasibility of the Fuzzy-PID controller, the simulation model of the system was built in Simulink. The results have showed that Fuzzy-PID controller can significantly reduce the angular error of the moving platform and provide the stable motion for transferring the divertor.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.577-588
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• 2022

Oil refineries' Fluid Catalytic Cracking Units (FCCU) when in full operation may exhibit strong fluid dynamics caused by turbulent flow in the piping system that may induce vibrations in other mechanical and structural components of the Unity. This paper reports on the experimental-theoretical-computational program performed to get the vibration properties and the dynamic response amplitudes to find out alternative solutions to attenuate the excessive vibrations that were causing fatigue fractures in components of the bottle like reactor-regenerator of an FCC unit in operation in an existing oil refinery in Brazil. Solutions to the vibration problem were sought with the aid of a 3D finite element model calibrated with the results obtained from experimental measurements. A short description of the found solutions is given and their effectiveness are shown by means of numerical results. The solutions were guided by the concepts of structural stiffening and dynamic control performed by a nonlinear pendulum controller whose mechanical design was based on parameters determined by means of a parametric study carried out with 2D and 3D mathematical models of the coupled pendulum-structure system. The effectiveness of the proposed solutions is evaluated in terms of the fatigue life of critical welded connections.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.2195-2205
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• 2023

One of the salient nuclear fuel performance parameters for new fuel types under development is changes in fuel thickness. To test the new commercially fabricated U-10Mo monolithic plate-type fuel, an irradiation experiment was designed that consisted of multiple mini-plate capsules distributed within the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) core, the mini-plate 1 (MP-1) experiment. Each capsule contains eight mini-plates that were either fueled or "dummy" plates. Fuel thickness changes within a fuel assembly can be characterized by measuring the gaps between the plates ultrasonically. The channel gap probe (CGP) system is designed to measure the gaps between the plates and will provide information that supports qualification of U-10Mo monolithic fuel. This study will discuss the design and the results from the use of a custom-designed CGP system for characterizing the gaps between mini-plates within the MP-1 capsules. To ensure accurate and repeatable data, acceptance and calibration procedures have been developed. Unfortunately, there is no "gold" standard measurement to compare to CGP measurements. An effort was made to use plate thickness obtained from post-irradiation measurements to derive channel gap estimates for comparison with the CGP characterization.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.29 no.5 s.101
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• pp.475-480
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• 2005

Lab scale experimental study was carried out for SBR process, to investigate the effects of influent ship sewage organic compound removal and Bacillus sp. state on design parameters. This process was able to remove nitrogen and phosphorus as well as organic matter efficiently. More than $92.0\%$ of chemical oxygen demand(COD) were removed. In addition, about $84.0\%$ of total nitrogen (T-N) was reduced. The total phosphorus(T-P) reduction averaged $93\%$. The performance load of SBR process was shown to be $0.095kg{\cdot}TOC/m3{\cdot}day$. The pH was decreased from 8.1 to 7.0 within 30 min and increased to 7.3 at the end of anoxic stage, and these phenomena were explained. The sludge produced in the SBR process is characterized by low generation rate (about $0.36kg{\cdot}MLSS/kg{\cdot}TOC$) and excellent settleability. The number of Bacillus sp. in the SBR was $24.2\%$, indicating that Bacillus sp. was a predominant species in the reactor.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.1834-1845
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• 2021

Liquid lead-bismuth cooled fast reactor is one of the most promising reactor types among the fourth-generation nuclear energy systems. The flow and heat transfer characteristics of lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) are completely different from ordinary fluids due to its special thermal properties, causing that the traditional Reynolds analogy is no longer recommended and appropriate. More accurate turbulence flow and heat transfer model for the liquid metal lead-bismuth should be developed and applied in CFD simulation. In this paper, a specific CFD solver for simulating the flow and heat transfer of liquid lead-bismuth based on the k - 𝜀 - k_𝜃 - 𝜀_𝜃 model was developed based on the open source platform OpenFOAM. Then the advantage of proposed model was demonstrated and validated against a set of experimental data. Finally, the simulation of LBE turbulent flow and heat transfer in a 7-pin wire-wrapped rod bundle with the k - 𝜀 - k_𝜃 - 𝜀_𝜃 model was carried out. The influence of wire on the flow and heat transfer characteristics and the three-dimensional distribution of key thermal hydraulic parameters such as temperature, cross-flow velocity and Nusselt number were studied and presented. Compared with the traditional SED model with a constant Pr_t = 1.5 or 2.0, the k - 𝜀 - k_𝜃 - 𝜀_𝜃 model is more accurate on predicting the turbulence flow and heat transfer of liquid lead-bismuth. The average relative error of the k - 𝜀 - k_𝜃 - 𝜀_𝜃 model is reduced by 11.1% at most under the simulation conditions in this paper. This work is meaningful for the thermal hydraulic analysis and structure design of fuel assembly in the liquid lead-bismuth cooled fast reactor.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.74-83
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• 2002

The maximun short circuit current of modern power system is becoming so large that circuit breaker is not expected to be able to shut down the current in the future In order cut over-currents, a system composed of a superconducting fault current limiter(SFCL) and traditional breaker seems to provide a promising solution for furture power operation. In present paper, three line-to-ground fault is assumed to happen at the center of 345kV transmission lines in a large capacity electric power system. The superconducting fault current limiter was represented using a commutation type, which consists of a non-inductive superconducting coil and current limiting element (resistor or reactor). from the viewpoint of current limiting performance, the prevention of the voltage drop at the load bus and comparision characteristics for two type SFCL. Desired design specification and operation parameters of SECL were also given qualitatively by the performance.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.16-28
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• 2014

This paper presents a novel high-power-factor circuit topology of AC to AC current-fed type high frequency resonant inverter which includes the function of power factor correction(PFC) in the proposed inverter to operate the AC input block with high power factor. The proposed circuit topology of AC to AC current fed type high resonant inverter removes DC link electrolytic capacitor and has also the one of power factor correction(PFC) in the inverter circuit without an additional PFC circuit since the input current by constituting it in parallel as an unit inverter, which assumes the class-E high frequency resonant inverter of conventional current-fed type, flows in the form of the resultant current flowing through each constant current reactor($L_{d1}$, $L_{d2}$). The circuit analysis of proposed inverter is generally described by adopting the normalized parameters and the evaluation of its operating characteristics are conducted by using the parameters such as the ratio of switching and resonant frequency(${\mu}$), coupling coefficient(k) and so on. An example of procedure for circuit design based on the characteristic values obtained from the theoretical analysis is presented. To confirm the validity of the theoretical analysis, the experimental results are also presented. In the future, the proposed inverter shows it can be practically used as power supply system for induction heating application, DC-DC converter etc.