Structural analysis of aircraft impact on a nuclear containment vessel and associated structures

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to extend a previous paper by Riera which presented: (a) the total reaction versus time relationship of an accidental impact of large commercial aircraft against a rigid surface, (b) the maximum response curve for an elastic undamped, one-degree of freedom system, (c) an analysis of impact on a simply-supported rectangular slab, (d) an axisymmetric analysis of vertical impact on the apex of the dome. The present paper, after completing the aircraft impact analysis and design of a current nuclear power plant, presents: (a) a consistent mass finite element approach for slab vibration analysis which is not limited to the simply-supported boundary conditions and can thus be employed to find more actual maximum responses of rectangular associated buildings, (b) a finite element plate bending analysis for slabs with arbitrary boundary conditions for practical design purposes, (c) a numerical method of solution which combines the advantage of both the direct integration and the finite difference approach for static and vibration analysis of rotationally symmetric shells subject to non-symmetric loads.