UB students advance seismic engineering in nuclear facilities

By Peter Murphy

“UB had a strong presence,” according to SUNY Distinguished Professor Andrew S. Whittaker. Four current students from the Department, and eight alumni wrote papers featured at the SMiRT25 conference, and there at least five representatives from the Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Department.

SMiRT25 is biennial conference brining together industry representatives and researchers associated with engineering of nuclear reactors and facilities.

"Our project focuses on seismic fluid structure interaction for a reactor vessel," says Chingching Yu, a PhD structural engineering student.

Yu and Mir working on a project together that will enhance the design and qualification of advanced nuclear reactors and their internal components. Yu deals with the numerical analysis associated with the project, and Mir conducts experiments on the earthquake simulator at UB's Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory.

Sai Sharath Parsi and Kaivalya M. Lal, two PhD students in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering also presented at the conference. Sharath was part of a panel of speakers that gave a two-hour workshop on MASTODON software, a Department of Energy finite element code developed at Idaho National Laboratory (a UB collaborator).

"The recent developments to the MASTODON code will enable research to identify and implelemnt effective strategies to cut down capilital costs of newly built nuclear plants, while meeting the risk goals," Sharath says.

Lal's research details projects are funded by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). "These studies address the cost implications for utilizing seismic isolation in reactor buildings and assess the use of equipment-based seismic protective systems," Lal says.

The four students also had multiple opportunities to meet with industry representatives through different networking dinners and the Early Career Hour meetings. These round table discussions give young researchers a chance to discuss technical questions, life and career experiences and advice from experts.

The Early Career Hour meetings are part of a larger initiative by SMiRT to get young and early career professionals to participate in the conference. Another activity associated with SMiRT’s Early Career Program is the Early Career Paper Competition. Yu was one of the finalists for the competition.

“There were about 50 papers from early career researchers and they chose six to become finalists. The final results were based on the papers and presentations,” Yu says.

In addition to workshops and special sessions, the students had an opportunity to go off-site and visit a nuclear emergency response center, and learn about protocols in case of a nuclear plant emergency. “This conference brings together practicing professionals from the industry and academics working in the nuclear energy domain,” Mir says, “to have someone from industry walk up to you after your presentation saying ‘hey, I look forward to reading your future work,' is thrilling and in a way, satisfying.”