Aircraft Impact Analysis on Nuclear Structures: State-of-the-art

Synopsis

Following the events of 11^th September 2001, public attention has been drawn to the potential malicious impact of large commercial aircrafts onto critical infrastructure, such as nuclear safety-related facilities. Since then, many nuclear regulators worldwide require the design of new nuclear safety-related facilities to demonstrate resistance to impact by large commercial aircraft with high velocity. In some countries, similar requirements have also been applied to existing nuclear facilities.

Together with the earthquake hazard, aircraft impact is one of the principal load cases which can often dictate the design of Structures, Systems and Components (SSCs) of nuclear safety-related facilities. Aircraft impact demands often govern the cross section dimensions and structural design of the external envelope of a new nuclear safety-related facility. Aircraft Impact Analysis (AIA) of nuclear structures is based essentially on deterministic analysis of a finite number of impact scenarios. In most cases, the impact load is represented as a load-time function (LTF) applied to the target structure. In the past, this method was considered satisfactory for impact caused by small military aircraft. However, this approach requires a number of assumptions and simplifications, which may not be valid for the case of large commercial aircraft. Recently, coupled modelling approaches have emerged, whereby the effect of missile-target interaction is considered by explicit modelling of the aircraft and the target structure.

This evening lecture will provide a review of the main concepts for performing advanced AIA studies currently being adopted in the nuclear industry internationally and will cover modelling of the aircraft and the aircraft impact load, modelling the target structure, conducting highly nonlinear dynamic analysis, including missile-target interaction analysis, the use of experimental data for validation studies and performance based design of nuclear structures for aircraft impact loads following the latest publicly available regulatory requirements on AIA.

About the speaker

Anton Andonov is a Principal Structural Engineer within the Mott MacDonald nuclear division Sofia office, specialising in AIA. Anton has published over 40 journal and conference papers internationally on analysis and design of mission critical structures for extreme loads, from which over 20 are on AIA related problems. In the last 10 years Anton has been involved in several projects for AIA related studies, both as part of the design activities for new nuclear installations and as part of safety justification of existing ones. Between 2011 and 2013 Anton was involved in EC the funded project RiskProtec CI which focused on assessment of the vulnerability of the European critical infrastructure to aircraft attack and is a co-author of the book summarising the results (ISBN 978-954-723-117-7). Anton was one of the UK EEFIT engineers that visited the Tohoku region in Japan after the devastating earthquake and tsunami and currently is a co-opted committee member of EEFIT.

Further information

This evening meeting is organised by SECED and chaired by Dr Ming Tan (Mott MacDonald). Non-members of the society are welcome to attend. Attendance at this meeting is free. Seats are allocated on a first come, first served basis. Tea and biscuits will be served from 5.30pm - 6pm. For further information, please contact Katherine Coldwell (tel. 020 7665 2238).