Patent Number: 
Section: claims

1. A method of predicting stresses on a boiling water reactor (BWR) steam dryer, comprising:acquiring pressure data from a BWR scale model system using at least one of a pressure transducer and a microphone at the BWR scale model system, the pressure data being empirical data;creating an analytical acoustic model of a BWR steam system;generating pressure estimations by inputting the empirical data into the analytical acoustic model of the BWR steam system;creating an analytical structural model of the BWR steam dryer; andpredicting stresses on the BWR steam dryer using the analytical structural model and the pressure estimations. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein creating the analytical acoustic model includes:producing a three-dimensional virtual model of a scale model BWR steam volume. 3. The method of claim 2, wherein generating pressure estimations includes:calculating acoustic modes of the BWR steam volume. 4. The method of claim 3, wherein generating pressure estimations further includes:reducing the number of acoustic modes to equal a number of empirical data points. 5. The method of claim 3, wherein generating the pressure estimations further includes:calculating coefficients of a modal series expansion based on the reduced number of acoustic modes and the empirical data to generate the pressure estimations at each node of the acoustic mesh. 6. The method of claim 5, wherein generating pressure estimations further includes:scaling the pressure estimations generated for the BWR scale model system to represent a full-size BWR steam volume. 7. The method of claim 1, wherein creating the analytical acoustic model includes:correlating test data obtained from the BWR scale model system with results obtained from the analytical acoustic model. 8. The method of claim 7, wherein creating the analytical acoustic model includes:modifying the analytical acoustic model based on the correlating until the test data substantially corresponds with the results obtained from the analytical acoustic model. 9. The method of claim 1, wherein creating an analytical structural model of the BWR steam dryer includes:producing a three-dimensional virtual model of the BWR steam dryer; anddiscretizing the three-dimensional virtual model using a finite element meshing algorithm to provide a structural mesh of the BWR steam dryer. 10. The method of claim 9, further comprising:scaling the pressure estimations generated for the BWR scale model system to represent a full-size BWR steam volume;projecting the scaled pressure estimations on the structural mesh of the analytical structural model. 11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:using finite element analysis to solve the analytical structural model based on the projected scaled pressure estimations;predicting stresses in the BWR steam dryer based on the solved analytical structural model. 12. A method of predicting stresses on a boiling water reactor (BWR) steam dryer, comprising:creating an analytical acoustic model of a BWR steam system;generating pressure estimations using the analytical acoustic model by inputting empirical data acquired from a BWR scale model system;scaling the pressure estimations generated to represent a full-size BWR steam volume;projecting the scaled pressure estimations on a structural mesh of an analytical structural model for the BWR steam dryer; andsolving the analytical structural model using finite element analysis to predict stresses on the BWR steam dryer.