Experimental Investigation of Control Rod Drops into Perturbed Fuel Assemblies

This paper discusses permanent deformation of the fuel assembly of pressurized water reactors that can satisfy a drop time requirement of the control rod assembly. During a seismic event, the fuel assemblies and the reactor core exhibit transient vibration. When the fuel assemblies collide, they develop impact forces in the spacer grids along the fuel assemblies. If the impact forces on some spacer grids of the fuel assembly exceed an allowable strength, the buckling occurs in the corresponding spacer grids, followed by permanent deformation. The geometry change of the buckled spacer grids leads to the movement of the guide tube positions in the fuel assembly. Therefore the geometry change is associated with the distortion of the control rod drop path. In this study, the permanent deformation of the spacer grids was measured during the impact tests, and the maximum deviation of the guide tube from the original position was reviewed. Control rod drop tests were also performed to measure the change in drop time according to the deformation of the fuel assembly. Using actuators in the loop test facility, the authors realized the first and second bending mode shapes of the fuel assembly under the flowing water condition. Based on a series of drop tests, the critical fuel assembly deformation was identified that could lead to a violation of an allowable drop time of the control rod.