A Quasi-Eulerian Fluid-Structure Code for Simulation of High-Pressure Transients in Core Components

The STRAW code was developed for the analysis of core components subjected to high-pressure transients. It is a finite element code that models both the fluid and structures. The code is able to treat material nonlinearities and geometric nonlinearities due to large displacements. The fluid model uses a quasi-Eulerian element, which enables nodes to be moved independently. Time integration is by the explicit central difference method. Although the code was designed for the study of core mechanics, it is applicable to a wide variety of problems because it uses a finite element format. The STRAW calculations for a Stanford Research Institute cluster experiment show that reasonable predictions can be made of the maximum strains in the structures.