The spent fuel storage rack of a nuclear plant stores the spent fuel temporarily before it can be moved to a reprocessing facility. Therefore, the spent fuel storage rack must have a high tolerance against large seismic loads. So, the free standing rack is developed in Japan as other countries. The free standing rack structure incorporates the effect of the friction force on the spent fuel pool floor, and the fluid effect.
Under earthquake condition, the free standing rack sliding and rocking motions are induced and the spent fuels rattle in the cells.
In this paper, sliding and rocking motions of full-scale rack model having full loading fuel assembly subjected to the seismic excitation are studied. To develop an analysis evaluation method for rack motions, we carried out seismic test of a full-scale rack model using a shaking table, and obtained the fundamental data about the free standing rack.
