Design and Analysis of Motor Operated Gate Valve for Nuclear Application

Abstract

Valves are essential elements in controlling the flow of fluid in many critical as well as general applications in variety of industries like process industries, chemical Industries, power sector, nuclear application etc. The application of valve in nuclear field is inevitable both on reactor side application (i.e. the side of nuclear power Plant where the component are subjected to nuclear radiation) and non reactor side (i.e. the side on which the components are free of nuclear radiation).This dissertation focus on design and analysis of a 3' class 600 motor operated gate valve for the nuclear application used specially at reactor side.

This project involves design of motor operated gate valve and its component. Generally the design of component of the gate valve assemblies is governed by various codes and standards like American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), American Petroleum Institute etc. The critical dimension of the valve to be obtained for 3' class 600 valve based on ASME codes and API standards. The obtained critical dimension has been checked for Primary pressure boundary and secondary pressure boundary to ensure that the level of stress generated primarily due to fluid pressure inside the valve components are remaining within the material limits.3D CAD model has been prepared which has been further used as input for the various FE analysis to validate the design for nuclear application like natural frequency analysis, pipe reaction end loading analysis, seismic analysis. Based on the results, the modification in existing model design is proposed and final design suitable for the nuclear application has been obtained.