Fire resistance of bi-directionally prestressed concrete under extreme fire loading

Abstract

Infrastructures such as prestressed concrete containment vessels (PCCVs) and liquid gas storage tanks are constructed as bi-directional prestressed concrete (PSC) structures to ensure outstanding leak-tight storage and shielding performance. However, PSC structures exhibit severe vulnerability to high-temperature fire due to the high-strength concrete used and the application of prestressing (PS) stresses to increase the strength of the structures. The PCCV of a 1400 MW advanced power reactor was selected as the target for study. A scaled-down model of the PCCV outer wall was fabricated and tested to determine its resistance to a standard fire-loading scenario. Furthermore, different PS forces were applied to the specimens to evaluate the effect of concrete confinement on the fire resistance. Test data of temperature distribution, PS force loss and residual strength capacity were obtained. The experimental data were used for calibration of a commercial finite-element simulation program (Midas FEA) for structural fire analysis of real-scale concrete structure and infrastructure. The simulation and test results showed significant similarity and the result trends were accurate.