Simulation of Relief Valve Dynamic Behaviour

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K.F. Hau
N.Y. Lee
A. Usmani

Abstract

Three heavy water spill incidents occurred at Wolsong-1, Pickering-A, and Bruce-A power plants in late 1994 and early 1995. In all incidents, the heavy water spills were caused by opening of the degasser/bleed condenser relief valves (RV). Detailed assessment of these incidents were carried out by the owners of the operating plants and by AECL. One of the key lessons learned from this assessments is that stable operation of the RVs is required to prevent damage to valve internals and associated piping resulting from waterhammer/dynamic loads due to the RV chatter. The RV chatter phenomenon depends strongly on the performance characteristics of the valve, the associated piping configuration, and the operating conditions. To help understand and explain the chatter phenomenon, and to assist the evaluation of the dynamic behaviour of the existing or new RV installations, two RV models were developed and incorporated into the existing waterhammer computer code, PTRAN. This paper describes the basic principle of the models and presents the simulation results in comparison with the test data.

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