• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.11
• /
• pp.4181-4194
• /
• 2022

Main steam safety valves are commonly used in nuclear power plants to provide final protections from overpressure events. Blowdown and dynamic stability are two critical characteristics of safety valves. However, due to the parameter sensitivity and multi-parameter features of safety valves, using traditional method to design and/or optimize them is generally difficult and/or inefficient. To overcome these problems, a surrogate model-based valve design optimization is carried out in this study, of particular interest are methods of valve surrogate modeling, valve parameters global sensitivity analysis and valve performance optimization. To construct the surrogate model, Design of Experiments (DoE) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of the safety valve were performed successively, thereby an ensemble surrogate model (E-AHF) was built for valve blowdown and stability predictions. With the developed E-AHF model, global sensitivity analysis (GSA) on the valve parameters was performed, thereby five primary parameters that affect valve performance were identified. Finally, the k-sigma method is used to conduct the robust optimization on the valve. After optimization, the valve remains stable, the minimum blowdown of the safety valve is reduced greatly from 13.30% to 2.70%, and the corresponding variance is reduced from 1.04 to 0.65 as well, confirming the feasibility and effectiveness of the optimization method proposed in this paper.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
• /
• v.4 no.2
• /
• pp.141-150
• /
• 2012

Ship damage caused by maritime casualties leads to marine pollution and loss of life and property. To prevent serious damage from maritime casualties, several types of safety regulations are applied in ship design. Damage stability regulation is one of the most important safety issues. Designs of ships for long international voyages must comply with these regulations. Current regulations, however, do not consider the characteristics of the operating route of each ship and reflect only ship size and type of cargo. In this paper, a damage safety assessment was undertaken for a ship carrying radioactive waste in actual wave conditions. Damage cases for safety assessment were constructed on the basis of safety regulations and related research results. Hull form, internal arrangement, loading condition and damage condition were modeled for damage safety simulation. The safety simulation was performed and analyzed for 10 damage cases with various wave heights, frequency and angle of attack on an operating route. Based on evaluation results, a design alternative was generated, and it was also simulated. These results confirmed that damage safety analysis is highly important in the design stage in consideration of the operating route characteristics by simulation. Thus a ship designer can improve safety from damage in this manner.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.53 no.8
• /
• pp.2600-2609
• /
• 2021

Low cycle fatigue behaviors of SA508-3 low-alloy steel were investigated in room-temperature air, high-temperature air and in light water reactor (LWR) water environments. The fatigue mean curve and design curve for the low-alloy steel are developed based on the fatigue data in room-temperature and high-temperature air. The environmental fatigue model for low-alloy steel is developed by the environmental fatigue correction factor (F_en) methodology based on the fatigue data in LWR water environments with the consideration of effects of strain rate, temperature, and dissolved oxygen concentration on the fatigue life.

• Journal of Ship and Ocean Technology
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.1-18
• /
• 2000

The paper describes a formalisation of a Design for Safety methodology in an integrated envi-ronment, outlines early developments of a software tool, and presents the results of an appli-cation of the methodology to a case study. The approach adopted attempts link safety per-formance prediction through the utilisation of appropriate technical tools, safety assessment deriving from risk-based methodologies and disparate design activities and issues. Black-board systems have been utilised as the platform in the development of the integrated design environment, allowing safety assessment to become an integral part of the design process. Finally, the case study addresses the application of the developed methodology to three dif-ferent arrangements of a conventional passenger Ro-Ro vessel, with the aim to demonstrate the validity of the process and methodology adopted. The findings are presented and dis-cussed, and recommendations given for the way forward.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.43-52
• /
• 2014

In weapon systems development, live fire tests have been frequently adopted to evaluate the performance of the systems under development. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure safety in the test ranges where the live fire tests can cause serious hazards. During the tests, a special care must be taken to protect the test and evaluation (T&E) personnel and also test assets from potential danger and hazards. Thus, the development and management of the range safety process is quite important in the tests of guided missiles and artillery considering the explosive power of the destruction. Note also that with a newly evolving era of weapon systems such as laser, EMP and non-lethal weapons, the test procedure for such systems is very complex. Therefore, keeping the safety level in the test ranges is getting more difficult due to the increased unpredictability for unknown hazards. The objective of this paper is to study on how to enhance the safety in the test ranges. To do so, an approach is proposed based on model-based systems engineering (MBSE). Specifically, a functional architecture is derived utilizing the MBSE method for the design of the range safety process under the condition that the derived architecture must satisfy both the complex test situation and the safety requirements. The architecture developed in the paper has also been investigated by simulation using a computer-aided systems engineering tool. The systematic application of this study in weapon live tests is expected to reduce unexpected hazards and test design time. Our approach is intended to be a trial to get closer to the recent theme in T&E community, "Testing at the speed of stakeholder's need and rapid requirement for rapid acquisition."

• Special Issue of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
• /
• 2015.09a
• /
• pp.69-73
• /
• 2015

An evaluation of the accidental limit state (ALS) for design of a semi-submersible drilling rig is one of the essential design requirements as well as ultimate limit state (ULS) and fatigue limit state (FLS). This paper describes the ALS evaluation on the explosion accident at shale shaker room of semi-submersible drilling rig. There are three steps for the ALS evaluation such as structural analysis at concept design, risk based safety design and structural analysis at detailed design. For the ALS evaluation at concept design, conceptual explosion overpressure from the Rule guided by the classification society was used in the structural analysis that was carried out using LS-DYNA. To set up the design accidental load (DAL), explosion analysis was carried out using FLACS taking safety barriers into consideration. Then, the structural analysis was carried out applying DAL for the ALS evaluation at detailed design. Through the ALS evaluation on the explosion at shale shaker room, the importance of the risk based safety design was described.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.71-86
• /
• 2005

Based on the test data of Nippon Steel Corporation, the formulas for calculating mechanical properties of fire-resistant (FR) steel at elevated temperatures have been established. A practical approach for fire safety design of FR steel members, including axially compressed members, flexural members and eccentrically compressed members, is developed in this paper. Compared with the full-scale specimen experiments and FEM numerical analysis, this practical approach for fire safety design of FR steel members is demonstrated to be effective and precise.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• v.33 no.6
• /
• pp.543-552
• /
• 2023

The design of foundations based on a deterministic approach may not be safe and reliable occasionally, since soils sometimes show considerable spatial variability, and thus, significant uncertainties in turn affect the estimation of footing bearing capacity. The design of footing on cohesionless stratums on the basis of reliability analysis has not received much attention. This paper performs two-dimensional random finite difference analyses of shallow strip footings on a spatially variable frictional soil considering correlation structure. Friction angle (ϕ) is considered as a log-normally distributed random variable and Monte Carlo Simulation is then performed to determine the statistical response based on the random fields. A new approach reliability-based safety factor is defined based on various reliability levels by considering the coefficient of variation of ϕ and correlation length in both the horizontal and vertical directions. The comparison of the probabilistic safety factor and the conventional one illustrates the limitations of the deterministic safety factor and provides insight into how the heterogeneity of soils properties affects the required safety factor. Results show that the conventional safety factor of 3 can be conservative in some cases, especially for soil with low values of mean ϕ and COV_ϕ.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.43-53
• /
• 2022

This paper describes an attempt to improve and optimize the operational safety level of a domestic research reactor by conducting a probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) under full-power operating conditions. The PSA was undertaken to assess the level of safety at an operating research reactor in Korea, to evaluate whether it is probabilistically safe and reliable to operate, and to obtain insights regarding the requisite procedural and design improvements for achieving safer operation. The technical objectives were to use the PSA to identify the accident sequences leading to core damage, and to conduct sensitivity analyses based thereon to derive insights regarding potential design and procedural improvements. Based on the dominant accident sequences identified by the PSA, eight types of sensitivity analysis were performed, and relevant insights for achieving safer operation were derived. When these insights were applied to the reactor design and operating procedure, the risk was found to be reduced by approximately ten times, and the safety was significantly improved. The results demonstrate that the PSA methodology is very effective for improving reactor safety in the full-power operating phase. In particular, it is a highly suitable approach for identifying the deficiencies of a reactor operating at full power, and for improving the reactor safety by overcoming those deficiencies.

• Journal of Ship and Ocean Technology
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.1-13
• /
• 2001

Present-day rules and regulations for the design and construction of ships are almost without exemption of a prescriptive and deterministic nature. Often it is argued that this situation is far from ideal; it does no right to the advances, which have been made during the past decades in engineering tools in marine technology, both in methodology and in computational power. Within IMO this has been realized for some time and has resulted in proposals to use Formal Safety Assessment(FSA) as a tool to improve and to modernize the rule making process. The present paper makes use of elements of the FSA methodology, but instead of working towards generic regulations or requirements, a Risk Assessment Approach, not unlike a 'safety case'; valid for a certain ship or type of ship is worked out. Delft University of Technology investigated the application of safely assessment procedures in ship design, in co-operation with Anthony Veder Shipowners and safety experts from Safely Service Center BV. The ship considered is a semi-pressurized-fully refrigerated LPG carrier. On the basis of the assumption that a major accident occurs, various accident, scenarios were considered and assessed, which would impair the safety of the carrier. In a so-called Risk Matrix, in which accident frequencies versus the consequence of the scenarios are depicted, the calculated risks all appeared lo be in the ALARP('as low as reasonable practicable') region. A number of design alternatives were compared, both on safety merits and cost-effectiveness. The experience gained with this scenario-based approach will be used to establish a set of general requirements for safety assessment techniques in ship design. In the view that assessment results will be most probably presented in a quasi-quantified manner, the requirements are concerned with uniformity of both the safety assessment. These requirements make it possible that valid comparison between various assessment studies can be made. Safety assessment, founded on these requirements, provides a validated and helpful source of data during the coming years, and provides naval architects and engineers with tools experience and data for safety assessment procedures in ship design. However a lot of effort has to be spent in order to make the methods applicable in day-to-day practice.