A Study on the Embedment Effect in the Soil-Structure Interaction Analysis of the APR1400

The SSI (Soil-Structure Interaction) analyses are being performed for the APR1400 (Advanced Power Reactor 1400MWe, Old name - KNGR ; Korean Next Generation Reactor) design, because the APR1400 is developed as a Standard Nuclear Power Plant concept enveloping suitable soil conditions. For the SSI analyses, SASSI program which adopts the Flexible Volume Method is used. In the SSI analyses, there can be uncertainties by Bond and De-bond problem between the structure and lateral soil elements. According to ASCE Standard 4, one method to address this concern is to assume no connectivity between structure and lateral soil over the upper half of the embedment of 20ft (6m), whichever is less. This study is performed as a part of the parametric analyses for the APR1400 seismic analyses to address the concern of the potential embedment effect on the in-structure response spectra due to connectivity between structure and lateral soil. In this study, 4 model cases are analyzed to check the potential embedment effect — Full connection, 20ft no connectivity which is defined as a minimum De-bond depth of the soil in ASCE Standard 4 and 26.5ft no connectivity between structure and lateral soil over the upper half of the embedment. Last one is full no connection for only reference. The in-structure response spectra are compared with the response spectra without considering the embedment effect.