Hold down spring(HDS), clamped between the upper support plate flange and the core barrel flange inside a pressurized reactor vessel, is used to provide a downward force to keep the core barrel stable and from being lifted off from the vessel ledge during reactor normal operation. Spring designer used to think under certain extreme operating conditions, the spring could be lifted off from the ledge because the spring is not stiff enough to prevent the “lift-off”. Therefore, the spring was designed as stiff as it practically can be. However, finite element study indicated that the magnitude of preload is a strong function of friction coefficient. To find the magnitude of the friction coefficient, a series of tests were conducted on 1/10 scale hold down spring samples of three different spring designs. From the test results, it was found that the friction coefficient increases rapidly as the number of loading cycles increases. This implies that the spring preload would increase rapidly during plant operation. Therefore, it is concluded that, because of the strong frictional effect, not only the current design is more than adequate, but also should be made even softer.
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