Dynamic soil-structure interaction modeling strategies applied to Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant case-study

Abstract

On the framework of the French research project SINAPS@, the main goal of this work is to assess the impact of different soil-structure interaction modeling strategies on the Unit 7 Kashiwasaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant reactor building response during the Niigata Chuetsu-Oki earthquake mainshock. his actual nuclear power plant case-study was already investigated during the KARISMA (KAshiwazaki-Kariwa Research Initiative for Seismic Margin Assessment) international benchmark exercise on 2009 organized by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and OECD/NEA, which concluded on the difficulty to correctly predict the Unit 7 Reactor Building response during the mainshock by considering available standard soil-structure interaction modeling. The modeling strategies investigated in this work include soil non-linearity, by considering a cyclic critical state elastic-plastic model, and structure-soil-structure interaction influence by directly considering a simplified model of the adjacent Turbine Building. All numerical simulations are performed using code aster Open source software. The comparison of results with recorded signals within the Unit 7 Reactor Building allow to emphasize some conclusions about the role of modeling assumptions. This paper gathers the research work conducted by EDF R&D in the SINAPS@ task 4.3 during the years 2015-2016.