Pump-induced pulsating pressure distributions in a system-integrated modular reactor

This study investigated pump pulsating pressure distributions in a scaled-down SMART research reactor developed by KAERI. The local pressures were measured in the research reactor to calculate the pump-induced loads. The calculated pressures agreed with the measured pressures at all 13 points in the reactor model within an error of 3%. The pressure variation was controlled by changing the number of pulsating pumps. When the number of pulsating pumps was one, two, or three, the relative pressure variation was 25%, 50%, and 75% of what was measured with four pulsating pumps. The pressure variation due to out-of-phase pulses could be deduced by superposition of the imposed pulses. The results indicated that the numerical method used in this study is suitable for calculating pump-induced loads in a nuclear reactor design.

► 300 MWt System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor (SMART) has been developed.
► The objective of this study is to find the numerical method for calculating pump-induced loads.
► We measured and calculated pump-induced pressures in the scaled-down reactor for SMART research.
► We found that the pump pressure variation could be deduced by superposition of the imposed pulses.