Spherical steel containments of pressurized water reactors under accident conditions: Investigation program and first results

Abstract

The investigations will deal with the mechanical behavior of a free standing spherical containment shell built for the latest type of a German pressurized water reactor. The diameter of the containment shell is 56 m. The wall thickness is 38 mm. The material used is the ferritic steel 15MnNi63. The investigation program includes theoretical as well as experimental activities and concerns four different accidents which are beyond the scope of the common design and licensing practice: containment behavior under quasi-static pressure increase up to containment failure; containment behavior under high transient pressures; containment vibrations due to earthquake loadings (consideration of shell imperfections); containment buckling due to earthquake loadings. First results concerning the containment behavior under quasi-static pressure increase are presented. It turns out that the mechanical failure of the containment shell is controlled by plastic instability. A computer program to describe this problem has been developed and membrane tests to check the computational methods have been carried out.