The GO-VIKING Stakeholders’ Workshop was held on Thursday, February 16, 2023, at EDF Lab Chatou in Paris, France. The workshop started at 8:30 with a networking session and was followed by a series of presentations on flow-induced vibrations in nuclear power plants. The attendance at this international event was a success: approximately 20 in-person and up to 30 virtual participants followed the presentations at EDF R&D.
Representatives from nuclear power plants, utilities, vendors, technical support organisations, research, and academia discussed all together the complex nature of the flow-induced vibrations, their consequences, and the possible technical solutions to avoid/mitigate these. Speakers from Europe, the USA and Canada gave interesting talks on these topics.
The first presentation was given by Pierre Moussou from EDF and IMSIA and discussed the old and new challenges for modelling flow-induced vibrations. This was followed by a presentation from the GO-VIKING coordinator, Angel Papukchiev from GRS, with a general overview of the project.
Representatives from Vattenfall in Sweden discussed their experience with flow-induced vibrations at Ringhals NPP and how high vibration levels in steam lines can lead to problems. EDF Energy UK shared some examples of fluid structure interaction from the UK nuclear fleet. Other presentations throughout the day covered topics such as flow-induced vibrations of fuel assemblies, reactor vessel internals, steam isolation valves, and feed-water check valves. There were also talks on grid-to-rod fretting wear simulation and modelling of flow-induced vibrations in tube arrays.
The workshop concluded with closing remarks from the organizers and a visit to the MEDOC facility, in which flow-induced vibrations experiments are being carried out. Overall, the GO-VIKING Stakeholders’ Workshop was a successful event that brought together experts from around the world to discuss the current status and challenges of flow-induced vibrations in nuclear power plants and how the GO-VIKING project can provide a significant contribution to address to these challenges, through the increased knowledge and modeling capabilities of these vibrations.
This will make the tools and methods developed by the GO-VIKING project even more relevant in increasing the structural integrity of today’s and tomorrow’s nuclear facilities.
