Analysis of the mock-up of a reactor containment building: Comparison with experimental results

Failure pressure analysis of a nuclear reactor prestressed concrete containment building

“…The analysis is based on the Serial Parallel Rule of Mixtures (S-P RoM) [3,6,9,10,16,18], which is a methodology developed for laminated composite materials that works as a manager of the constitutive models used for the component materials that conform the composite. Therefore, a proper definition of the constitutive laws used for the materials of the containment, i.e., concrete, prestressing steel, reinforcing steel and liner steel, is required in order to predict the behaviour of the prestressed concrete structure over the 40 years operational time window and while the internal pressure is increased.…”

“…The analysis of the structure has been performed using the S-P RoM [3,6,9,10,16,18] which is an evolution of the Mixing Theory [4,16,18,20].…”

“…This distinction has been made to reflect the existing difference between these tendons in terms of trajectory and initial prestressing forces which condition the stress distribution. Additional information about the procedure followed when developing a Maxwell model can be found in reference [9]. Calibrating the viscous behaviour of the prestressing system using real recordings, indirectly allows to include other phenomena aside to the steel relaxation, such as creep or shrinkage, which are not taken into account by the model used to describe the behaviour of the concrete introduced in section 3.1.…”

“…All the structural elements are considered in the model, including buttresses, main penetrations, the liner and the tendons of the prestressing system. The materials' response is calculated using the Serial-Parallel Rule of Mixtures (S-P RoM) [3,6,9,10,16,18] which is used for the analysis of composite materials and also allows to constitutively take into account the prestressing effect and material non-linearities.…”

Ageing and air leakage assessment of a nuclear reactor containment mock-up: VERCORS 2nd benchmark

“…This approach allows the use of distinct constitutive models [27] for each of the component materials (rebars, concrete and tendons) and predicts both the overall behaviour of the prestressed concrete containment and the stress and strain states of the materials in each finite element. The prestressing steel is modelled through a viscoelastic model (generalized Maxwell) and the reinforcing steel has been homogenized with the concrete whose behaviour is captured through an isotropic [28] damage model together with an uncoupled Kelvin model. No thermal and hydric calculations are performed.…”