Development of high-immersive simulation system for designing maintenance strategy and its application to CLEAR-I

The maintenance strategy is imperative and important to be considered in the design process of advanced nuclear reactor as early as possible. The design and validation of the maintenance strategy are key challenges which remain to be resolved due to the complex mechanical structure, the expensive physical mockup, and the potential risk of radiation hazards. In this paper, a high-immersive interactive simulation system has been developed to simulate and verify maintenance strategy by using virtual reality. Main features include: (1) rapid modeling and real-time rendering of the large-scale three-dimensional radiation scene, (2) real-time interactive roaming by tracking the 6-DOF body motion, (3) the interactive disassembly simulation of the mechanism structure were controlled by the hand gestures. The system can provide designers with an intuitive experience environment, an efficient and flexible interactive way as well as the whole process simulation of maintenance strategy. It has been applied to simulate and verify the maintenance strategy of the spallation target proton beam window for China LEAd-based research Reactor (CLEAR-I). The simulation result proved the maintenance strategy of proton beam window was reasonable and feasible. The system was useful to verify maintenance strategy, optimize maintenance operation, reduce intervention time and exposure dose of workers. It provided a high efficiency and low cost way for simulating maintenance strategy to meet the requirements of ALARA rules and can be extended to other nuclear facilities.