Large-Scale Soil–Structure–Fluid Interaction for Seismic Risk Assessment of Advanced Reactors (SMRs)
Jose Barrios Lopez
School of Engineering
Faculty Supervisor: Jenna Wong
This project develops and validates a numerical soil column model to simulate one-dimensional seismic wave propagation using LS-DYNA. A 1 ft × 1 ft × 15 ft soil column was discretized using solid cube elements to capture wave transmission, and the 1940 El Centro earthquake record was applied as a prescribed base acceleration. Boundary conditions were used to create a single degree of freedom model and approximate free-field response, and the soil was modeled as a linear elastic material with 3% frequency-dependent damping over 0.2–20 Hz. Model results were validated against analytical solutions processed in Python, showing strong agreement. This work serves as a step toward investigating large-scale soil–structure interaction (SSI) and soil–structure–fluid interaction (SSFI) for advanced nuclear reactor systems under seismic loading. This step is supporting ongoing efforts with the University of Nevada, Reno and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to improve seismic risk assessment of small modular reactors (SMRs) through nonlinear modeling and validation.