Performance evaluations of PSC panels from blast followed by fire loading scenario

Abstract

Public fear of safety of NPPs reached the highest level due to social insecurity from the Chernobyl and Fukushima NPP accidents. Also, due to possibility of a terrorism or an accident of the radiation containing structures in NPPs, structural design details are being studied in depth by the design engineers to improve its safety from the extreme hazard events. Since PCCV is a last safety barrier in preventing radiation emission to the surrounding environment at a time of a catastrophic event, the safety of PCCV constructed as a bi-directionally prestressed concrete (PSC) structure is the most important requisite in having a safe NPP. In order to better design the structure for an extreme incident, its failure mechanism and resistant capacity under an extreme loading scenario must be precisely evaluated. Therefore, in this study, scaled down bi-directional PSC panels modeled after a PCCV outer wall were constructed to apply a blast followed by a fire load. The experimental data such as the fracture mode, the energy absorption capacity, deflection, prestressing force loss, surface damage, and heat transfer, thermal spalling depth, reinforcement melting were obtained from the tests for the simulation program calibration work. With the calibrated program, the blast and fire simulations of the real scale structures can be performed.