Structure Topology Optimization Design and Shock Resistance Study on Nuclear Power Safety DCS Cast Aluminum Cabinet

Abstract Offshore floating nuclear power plant (FNPP) is characterized by its small and mobility, which is not only able to provide safe and efficient electric energy to remote islands, but to the oil and gas platforms. The safety digital control system (DCS) cabinet, as a carrier for the electronic devices, plays a significant role in ensuring the normal operation of the nuclear power plant. To satisfy the requirements of cabinet used in the sea environment, such as well rigidity, shock load resistance, good seal and corrosion resistance, etc, more and more attention is focused on the cast aluminum cabinet. However, the cast aluminum structure may cause larger weight of cabinet, which inevitability affects the mobility of cabinet, and increases the carried load of ship as well. Therefore, seeking for an effective approach to design a light weight cast aluminum cabinet for the offshore FNPP is definitely necessary. In this work, a frame of cast aluminum cabinet with lightweight is obtained successfully via structure topology optimization design, it is found that the weight of the frame can be reduced to 50% after optimization iterations. Subsequently, the natural frequency of the optimized cast aluminum cabinet is calculated by using ABAQUS, it is seen that the first mode frequency of the frame is beyond 30 Hz, which can meet the basic stiffness requirement. Accordingly, dynamic design analysis method (DDAM) is performed to verify the ability of the optimized cast aluminum cabinet in resisting sudden shock load, and the shock response characteristics of the cabinet are determined. Numerical results support that the optimized frame of cabinet possesses good resistance to high level shock. However, for the assembled cast aluminum cabinet, the vertical shock circumstance turns out to be the most critical condition, high stress and deformation regions occurs at the bracket and column. Reinforcements are proposed to make the bracket stiffer in this shock loading condition.