Validation of risk-informed safety margin characterization for flooding of nuclear power plants

Flooding risk to power plants is difficult to assess due to the very large variety of possible scenarios, and the high uncertainties associated with each case. To better characterize these risks and properly design counter-measures, a computationally efficient numerical solver is needed to parse through the possible scenarios and obtain statically relevant data. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is a promising new technique for simulating violent free-surface flows. However, little work has been done to systemically validate the SPH predictions in the context of flooding accidents. The present paper describes such validation study focused on wave impact pressure.