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U.S. Department of Energy
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Analysis of concrete containment structures under severe accident loading conditions

Conference ·
OSTI ID:10144592

One of the areas of current interest in the nuclear power industry is the response of containment buildings to internal pressures that may exceed design pressure levels. Evaluating the response of structures under these conditions requires computing beyond design load to the ultimate load of the containment. For concrete containments, this requirement means computing through severe concrete cracking and into the regime of wide-spread plastic rebar and/or tendon response. In this regime of material response, an implicit code can have trouble converging. This paper describes some of the author`s experiences with Version 5.2 of ABAQUS Standard and the ABAQUS concrete model in computing the axisymmetric response of a prestressed concrete containment to ultimate global structural failure under high internal pressures. The effects of varying the tension stiffening parameter in the concrete material model and variations of the parameters for the CONTROLS option are discussed.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
AC04-94AL85000
OSTI ID:
10144592
Report Number(s):
SAND--93-3949C; CONF-9406132--2; ON: DE94010398; BR: GB0103012
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English