• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.140-145
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• 2023

When performing stress analysis for a nozzle in nuclear power plants, the nozzle loads should be determined conservatively. Existing stress analysis report of 3-D nozzle loads in nuclear power plants often provide only load magnitude not the sign (direction). Since calculated stress distribution depends on load direction, determining critical load directions for conservative stress analysis is crucial. In this study, an efficient method for determining critical load directions in nozzle loads is proposed. In the proposed method, stresses are firstly calculated using elastic finite element (FE) analysis for the uni-axial load in each direction. Then stress distributions for the multi-axial loads are analytically calculated using the principle of superposition. The calculated stress values are verified by comparing with FE analysis results under multi-axial loading. By using this method, the complex task of determining conservative load directions can be simplified.