Effects of Magnetite Aggregate and Steel Powder on Thermal Conductivity and Porosity in Concrete for Nuclear Power Plant

Abstract

Among many engineering advantages in concrete, low thermal conductivity is an attractive property. Concrete has been widely used for nuclear vessels and plant facilities for its excellent radiation shielding. The heat isolation through low thermal conductivity is actually positive for nuclear power plant concrete; however the property may cause adverse effect when fires and melt-down occur in nuclear vessel since cooling down from outer surface is almost impossible due to very low thermal conductivity. If concrete containing atomic reactor has higher thermal conductivity, the explosion risk of conductive may be partially reduced. This paper presents high thermally conductive concrete development. For the work, magnetite with varying replacements of normal aggregates and steel powder of 1.5% of volume are considered, and the equivalent thermal conductivity is evaluated. Only when the replacement ratio goes up to 30%, thermal conductivity increases rapidly to 2.5 times. Addition of steel powder is evaluated to be effective by 1.08~1.15 times. In order to evaluate the improvement of thermal conductivity, several models like ACI, DEMM, and MEM are studied, and their results are compared with test results. In the present work, the effects of steel powder and magnetite aggregate are studied not only for strength development but also for thermal behavior based on porosity.