High-Performance Manufacturing of Canned Main Coolant Pump—Part I: Synergistical Design and Processing Optimization

Abstract High-performance manufacturing (HPM) of complex products is proposed to integrate the design and processing dependent on material-product-process linking for knowledge-based deployment of advanced manufacturing technologies via a pivotal role of surface integrity toward desired functional performance. Bridging the material-product-process gaps of a canned main coolant pump (MCP) in nuclear power plant is a big challenge due to high multicomponents system complexity. To enable the integrated design and processing of the canned MCP, we expand the HPM framework taking account of the system-components crosslinking on material-product-process linking by the experimentally characterized surface integrity change of components determining final functional performance of system. To this end, this work is divided into two parts covering the synergistical design and processing optimization and reliability evaluation of the canned MCP manufactured by advanced processes. In Part I, the canned MCP with high dynamic performance is manufactured by the synergistical design and processing optimization. A coupled design and processing modeling of canned MCP put into the system-components crosslinking from a full finite element dynamics model of system connected with the manufacturing thermodynamics models of components. The surface integrity of all components in process chains and subsequent service is pivoted in the system-components crosslinking on the material-product-process linking based on the data regularization and model regularization of the material-oriented regularization (MOR) method to relax the ill-posed optimization problem. The key components, including duplex-direction tilting pad thrust bearings, rotor/stator cans, pressure boundary components, and flywheels, are initially identified in the data regularization by the empirical relations of accumulative surface integrity change under the respective service conditions of components allocated from the entire service conditions of system. The key process chains of the key components to deploy the advanced manufacturing technologies rely on the characteristic process signatures (PSs) posted in the model regularization by the experimentally characterized surface integrity change using the nondestructive testing (NDT). The manufacturing inverse problem of integrated design and processing in the system-components crosslinking is solved by the sensitivity matrix algorithm following the characteristic PSs and, therefore, the design and processing parameters of canned MCP are synergistically optimized in the coupled design and processing modeling. Finally, the canned MCP prototype with the high dynamic performance is successfully manufactured by the optimized additive manufacturing, near-net shape manufacturing, joining/cladding, and surface modification/coating.