The objectives of this contract are to assess existing analytical tools and develop recommendations on their appropriate use for calculating soil pressures and structural response of partially to fully embedded nuclear power plants under seismic loading conditions.
Contact:
Adelis.rodriguez@nrc.gov or US NRC Attn: Adelis Rodriguez Mail Stop TWB-01-B10M, Washington DC 20555.
The importance of seismically-induced (or dynamic) pressure on walls was recognized by Okabe (1924) and Mononobe (1929) following the great Kanto earthquake of 1923. This insight led to the development of the Mononobe-Okabe (M-O) method for determining seismically-¬induced lateral earth pressures on walls. Although decades have passed since the M-O method was developed, and a number of other relationships and methods have been developed, seismically-induced lateral earth pressures are still very poorly understood and very few predictive tools exist. This is because the difficulties of obtaining actual field data, coupled with the complexity and cost of the necessarily large scale laboratory studies, have resulted in a problematic lack of data. As a result, the M-O method is still the most widely used tool for predicting seismically-induced lateral earth pressure with finite element modeling used for advanced analyses. Unfortunately, lack of accuracy and precision remain significant issues. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is interested in investigating new approaches to the determination of dynamic lateral earth pressures during seismic events.
In an effort to address this need, several years ago the NRC undertook a project in which Brookhaven National Laboratory used the computational tools SASSI and LS DYNA to attempt to replicate seismic wall pressure that had been recorded in a series of experiments undertaken by the Nuclear Power Engineering Corporation (NUPEC ) through support by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) of Japan. The BNL analyses and results are reported in NUREG/CR-6957. The NUPEC Seismic Field Test Program is described in NUREG/CR-6822. Unfortunately, while the analyses were able to replicate the acceleration of the structures to a large degree, the predicted lateral pressures showed a poor fit to the recorded data. This work again showed the challenges the engineering community faces in predicting dynamic lateral earth pressures with the level of accuracy desired by the structural engineering community.
Accurate prediction of seismically-induced earth pressures and the associated structural response are of interest for NRC staff because several advanced reactor designs propose to fully or partially embed reactor structures as one of their major design features.
NRC research has the principal goals of providing technical bases and technical tools to aid NRC staff in making regulatory decisions and developing and disseminating regulatory guidance that is used by both the NRC staff and the nuclear industry to make safety decisions by the agency. Research outcomes should be consistent with and support these goals.
The objectives of this contract are to assess existing analytical tools and develop recommendations on their appropriate use for calculating soil pressures and structural response of partially to fully embedded nuclear power plants under seismic loading conditions.
It is anticipated that this requirement will result in one (1) contract award. It is anticipated that the contract will be a cost reimbursement type contract.
The period of performance of the resultant contract will be forty eight (48) months from date of award.
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The size standard for this solicitation is average annual receipts of $6.5 million over the past three years, as set forth under NAICS 541990.
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