Modeling I

I’ve just finished modeling geometry of a VVER-440 power reactor building. I’m completely bushed yet very glad I managed to do it.

It’s just the steel part of it. Under the trusses will reside the concrete containment and auxiliary structures.

Now a lot of work has to be done further. It’s just an AutoCAD 3D model. It has to be imported to the FEA solver’s preprocessor, crunched a bit to mitigate some minor errors; then materials would be applied, sections specified. Then, a lot of work to specify coupled nodes, etc.
At last, static and dynamic loads will be applied, including seismic and aircraft impact, then comes solving the resulting finite element model, and a heck of messing with the apparently irrelevant results. After that, detailed analysis of structural members and writing about 80 pages of final safety assessment report. Man, I’m bushed.

When I’ll be finished, perphaps I’ll give a little more detail about how it was done.
Also, it’ll make for a great entry into the would-be portfolio.