The University of Bristol recently was recently invited to present research findings at a major UK meeting in the area of structural integrity for the nuclear industry.
Nader Zentuti, who is a PhD student in the Solid Mechanics Research Group, presented on the topic of “Probabilistic Structural Integrity” to a joint symposium of The UK Technical Advisory Group on the Structural Integrity of High Integrity Plant (TAGSI) and the UK Forum for Engineering Structural Integrity (FESI). This meeting was hosted by TWI in Cambridge.
Partnership with EDF Energy
Nader’s research has been funded by EDF Energy, as part of their High Temperature Centre programme partnership with UoB. A particular focus of the research has been to develop new approaches to support assessment of components which operate at high temperatures (in the creep regime) in EDF’s UK fleet of Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs).
Lifetime assessment procedures for high temperature components incorporate conservatism to account for various uncertainties. These assessments are by nature deterministic, and do not provide advice on assessing their in-built conservatism. The UoB research work is developing new, probabilistic methodologies for lifetime assessment. This is a vitally important area of research, as creep can be a major lifetime-limiting factor in the operation of high temperature plants.
Research Paper
For further details, please see:
Solid Mechanics Research Group
The Solid Mechanics Research Group is part of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Bristol. You can read more about its work here: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/research/solids/