Surrogate modelling to enable structural assessment of collision between vertical concrete dry casks

Date
2019
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Abstract

Vertical concrete dry casks, used for interim storage of spent nuclear fuel, are susceptible to large horizontal displacements caused by lateral loads. This study explores the collision between adjacent casks in the case of such large motions. To estimate an upper bound for the probability of failure, a common collision scenario that causes severe structural damage is determined through a comparative deterministic analysis. Then the effects of uncertain parameters on the cask’s performance in the specific collision scenario are studied with a probabilistic approach. Numerical simulations are conducted for 200 realisations of the collision problem to evaluate the canister maximum strain and the overpack accelerations. Then surrogate models, such as polynomial response surface models, multivariate adaptive regression splines, regression trees, and support vector machines, are trained on the response data to derive efficient approximating functions for these responses. Utilising the best developed surrogate models, fragility and the failure probability given collision are estimated. The findings show that the structural integrity of the dry cask is generally maintained in case of the collision. That is, the canister might yield due to the impact loads, but the probability of the canister fracture is negligible for the cask and parameter space considered here.

Description
Advisor
Degree
Type
Journal article
Keywords
Citation

Sichani, Majid Ebad and Padgett, Jamie E.. "Surrogate modelling to enable structural assessment of collision between vertical concrete dry casks." Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, 15, no. 9 (2019) Taylor & Francis: 1137-1150. https://doi.org/10.1080/15732479.2019.1618878.

Has part(s)
Forms part of
Rights
This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Taylor & Francis.
Link to license
Citable link to this page