Abstract
Piping systems in a nuclear plant can be damaged by high-cycle fatigue due to acoustic-induced vibration. Moreover, if the frequency of the vibration in the piping system is overlapped with a natural frequency of the piping, the magnitude of the amplitude will be increased resulting in many problems. For example, the damage is considered as flow-induced acoustic resonance at the branch pipes of the safety relief valve in the main steam lines. This study has investigated the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis methodology to predict and quantify the vortex shedding frequencies and the pressure pulsation magnitude in the dead-end piping system. In order to estimate the vortex shedding vibration, a high level turbulent model should be applied. Such a turbulent model, however, requires a substantial amount of computing time. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of the main pipe length and the sublayer inflation rate on the vortex shedding frequency and pressure pulsation magnitude. The results for the effects will be able to reduce the size of the fluid domain so that the computing time can be significantly decreased in using the high resolution turbulent models.
