Analysis and Test Verification of Control Rod Buffer in HTR

The thin-walled shell buffer in high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR) was designed for absorbing the kinetic energy of the control rod drop in the drive line fracture accident. The thin-walled cylinder structure satisfying the requirements of actual working condition was design by using the energy absorption model of the classical cylinder shell under axial pressure. By using ABAQUS/explicit with J-C constitutive model, the finite element models of both the real reactor condition and the test condition were built to simulate the collision. Based on the analysis results, the control rod fall-down test was designed and implemented. The test results demonstrate that stable progressive buckling occurs when the full size buffer is impacted by equiponderance test bar, and the buffer can reduce the crush force effectively and protect the graphite from being destroyed. The analysis results show that the test model can represent and envelope the real condition in reactor.