Coupled thermo-structural analysis for in-vessel retention in PHWR using ABAQUS

The analysis shows that the calandria vessel may not undergo inelastic strain failure as long as the calandria vault water is available. The failure of calandria vessel may occur due to the localised melting when the vault water is not available. Further the paper also presents experimental studies planned to investigate the heat transfer from calandria with core debris to calandria vault water. Finite element simulation is presented which is used to design the proposed direct heating arrangement to simulate the debris heat flux.