The South West Nuclear Hub recently hosted a successful meeting of a major European nuclear research project, ATLAS+ (Advanced Structural Integrity Assessment Tools for Safe Long Term Operations). The University of Bristol academic lead on this project is Dr Mahmoud Mostafavi, working with Dr Chris Simpson (Research Associate) and Ryan Coulthard (PhD student).
The ATLAS+ Project
ATLAS+ commenced in 2017; the project is led by Finland’s VTT and is part of Nugenia. The main objective and mission of project is to develop advanced structural assessment tools to address the remaining technology gaps for the safe and long term operation of nuclear reactor pressure coolant boundary systems.
A key Bristol contribution to the meeting was to present a summary of a literature review on the probabilistic modelling of residual stresses in welded materials and the uncertainties of these methods. This detailed the currently available approaches of predicting the residual stress distributions throughout a specimen as well as the methods that can be utilised to better understand the levels of uncertainty these predictions have.
Next Steps
Next tasks in the project for the UoB team include preparing an experiment at the Diamond Light Source to investigate the redistribution of weld residual stress as a result of loading and temperature, as well as attending the ATLAS+ general assembly to be hosted by EDF in France in May 2018.
Other Nuclear Research Projects
The South West Nuclear Hub brings together a large portfolio of nuclear-related research projects; find out more about them on our Case Studies page.