Damage mechanism and response of reinforced concrete containment structure under internal blast loading

Reinforced concrete containment (RC) is the most significant component of the nuclear power plant. It may lead to serious disaster owning to the leakage of radioactive materials as the reasons of internal explosion of reinforced concrete containment caused by earthquakes, fires, gas explosions or terrorist attacks, etc. The objective of this paper is to investigate the behavior of reinforced concrete containment, numerical simulation taking into account fluid solid coupling interaction is conducted for the analysis on the dynamic responses of reinforced concrete containment under internal blast loading using LS-DYNA software, especially focusing on its damage mechanism. The generation and the propagation of blast wave and its effect on a containment structure are discussed using Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) algorithm and multiple material models. The analysis results of the containment have been compared by empirical equations. Parametric studies have also been performed for internal detonation under different scale distances at a standoff distance of 20 m in the RC containment. The results indicate that the influences of scale distances and mesh qualities of structure on dynamic response and damage mechanism of the structure are analyzed to assess the structural antiexplosion capability. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.