Drop impact analysis for spent fuel assembly under transportation conditions

Abstract:
In this paper, spent fuel transportation cask is taken as the research object. Based on the software ANSYS/LS-DYNA, a multi-component model of a spent fuel transportation cask with the bilinear elastic-plastic constitutive relation was built up to simulate the 9 meter drop process under three drop conditions by the explicit dynamic analysis approach. The results are as follows, each component of the structure can meet the requirement of the plastic strain under vertical drop and it is found that a large plastic deformation will occur on the basket leading to the structure failure, while the fuel assembly can still be safe with little plastic deformation under horizontal and angular drop. The simulation method and conclusion in this paper can provide reference for the safety assessment of spent fuel assembly under transportation accident.