Abstract
The design of the nuclear power plant shall meet the general objective to ensure that the safety functions of the systems and components are not affected by any external explosion hazard. A protection device must be sufficiently designed to protect the target equipment from the external explosion load. The shock wave propagation and attenuation was simulated dynamically for a new protection device withstand external explosion by use of the computational fluid dynamics software FLUENT. The method used in the simulation was firstly validated by comparing the simulation and the results of the shock tube test. Furthermore, the numerical model of the shock wave propagation and attenuation through the protection device was developed by this method, and the pressure time history behind the protection device was obtained, and then the protective effect of more layers of the protection device and the attenuation effect of the protection device preventing the lower amplitude of the incident shock wave were taken into account. It was found that the protection device could provide an effective limitation to the external explosion, the protective effect had not been strengthened obviously with more layers of the same protection device, and the attenuation effect would decrease with the lower amplitude of the incident shock wave. This analysis practice predicts virtually the physical phenomena, and can be taken as a guidance for the protection device design development and improve our understanding of external explosion shock wave phenomena.
