PSR-0538 P-CARES 2.0.0.

1. NAME OR DESIGNATION OF PROGRAM:  P-CARES 2.0.0

3. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM OR FUNCTION

P-CARES 2.0.0 (Probabilistic Computer Analysis for Rapid Evaluation of Structures) was developed for NRC staff use to determine the validity and accuracy of the analysis methods used by various utilities for structural safety evaluations of nuclear power plants. P-CARES provides the capability to effectively evaluate the probabilistic seismic response using simplified soil and structural models and to quickly check the validity and/or accuracy of the SSI data received from applicants and licensees. The code is organized in a modular format with the basic modules of the system performing static, seismic, and nonlinear analysis.

4. METHODS

P-CARES is an update of the CARES program developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory during the 1980's. A major improvement is the enhanced analysis capability in which a probabilistic algorithm has been implemented to perform the probabilistic site response and soil-structure interaction (SSI) analyses. This is accomplished using several sampling techniques such as the Latin Hypercube sampling (LHC), engineering LHC, the Fekete Point Set method, and also the traditional Monte Carlo simulation. This new feature enhances the site response and SSI analysis such that the effect of uncertainty in local site soil properties can now be quantified. Another major addition to P-CARES is a graphical user interface (GUI) which significantly improves the performance of P-Cares in terms of the inter-relations among different functions of the program, and facilitates the input/output processing and execution management. It also provides many user friendly features that would allow an analyst to quickly develop insights from the analysis results.

5. RESTRICTIONS ON THE COMPLEXITY OF THE PROBLEM:  None noted.

6. TYPICAL RUNNING TIME:  The sample problems produce results in seconds.

8. RELATED OR AUXILIARY PROGRAMS:  CARES (PSR-0388).

10. REFERENCES

- J. Zu, A. J. Philippacopoulas, C. A. Miller and C. J. Costantino:
"CARES (Computer Analysis for Rapid Evaluation of Structures) Version 1.0, Seismic Module Theoretical Manual," NUREG/CR-5588 (BNL-NUREG-52241), Vol.1 (July 1990).

- J. Nie, J. Xu, C. Costantino, and V. Thomas:
"P-CARES: Probabilistic Computer Analysis for Rapid Evaluation of Structures,"
NUREG/CR-6922 BNL-NUREG-77338-2006 (January 2007).

11. HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

P-CARES 2.0.0 was developed on personal computers under Windows XP.

13. SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

P-CARES 2.0.0 runs on Pentium personal computers under Windows XP SP2.  Memory and disk space of modern computers are mostly abundant for P-CARES. P-CARES should be able to run on any recent computer. RSICC tested the included Windows executable on a Pentium 4 CPU 2.26 GHz running Windows XP SP2. The computing core of P-CARES, which includes the free field convolution analysis, kinematic interaction, structural analysis, and some other frequently used utilities, is written in standard Fortran 90/95 and is portable to other platforms. The rest of the modules, including the probabilistic simulation, execution management, and the GUI, are written in the Python programming language that is open source and freely available to all popular platforms. The GUI is developed in wxPython, a Python binding to the C++ wxWidgets GUI library that is available to multiple platforms. These programming tactics in P-CARES development ensure its portability over multiple platforms.

Contributed by:
                Radiation Safety Information Computational Center
                Oak Ridge National Laboratory
                Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA

Developed by:   Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York, USA
                U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Source codes
Sample data
Windows executable
Electronic documentation