• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.167-174
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• 2021

Recent investigation into the integrity of nuclear containment buildings has highlighted the importance of developing an elaborate diagnostic method to evaluate the distribution and size of cavities inside concrete walls. As part of developing such a method, this paper presents a finite element approach to modeling elastic waves propagating in the containment building walls of a nuclear power plant. We introduce a perfectly matched layer (PML) wave-absorbing boundary to limit the large-scale nuclear containment wall to the region of interest. The formulation results in a semi-discrete form with symmetric damping and stiffness matrices. The transient elastic wave equations for a mixed unsplit-field PML were solved for displacement and stresses in the time domain. Numerical results show that the sensitivity of displacement, velocity, acceleration, and stresses is large depending on the size and location of the cavity. The dynamic response of the wall slightly differs depending on the existence of the containment liner plate. The results of this study can be applied to a full-waveform inversion approach for characterizing cavities inside a containment wall.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.601-612
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• 2013

In the construction of nuclear power plants using massive walls, the use of high-strength re-bars for shear design is necessary to enhance the constructability and economy. In this study, low-rise walls (aspect ratio of 1.0) with grade 550 MPa bars were tested under cyclic loading to investigate the shear capacity and deformation capacity. The test parameters were the grade of horizontal re-bars (550 MPa, 420 MPa), strength of concrete compressive strength (46 MPa, 70 MPa), horizontal/vertical reinforcement ratio, use of lateral confinement hoops, shape of cross section, and failure modes (shear failure before or after flexural yielding). The test results were compared with those of walls with grade 420 MPa bars and predicted strength by current design codes. The results showed that the shear strength of the walls with 550 MPa bars was comparable to that of the walls with 420 MPa bars though the safe margin slightly decreased. ACI 349 provides underestimated shear strength for the walls with 550 MPa bars. In case of the wall with flexural yielding, a large deformation capacity was achieved. This result indicates that the ACI 349 provisions can be safely applied to seismic design of the low-rise walls (aspect ratio of 1.0) with grade 550 MPa bars.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1999.10a
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• pp.369.2-369
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• 1999

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.277-287
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• 2009

The objective of this study was to experimentally investigate the structural behavior of steel plate concrete walls with vertical ribs (SSC walls), to compare the experimental results with the currently applied evaluation equations, and to obtain information that would be useful in the development of design equations for SSC walls. SSC test specimens that were subjected to in plane shear forces and bending moments were fabricated and tested. The experimental results show that the effect of vertical ribs on the structural behavior of SSC walls may be neglected, and that the confinement effect of concrete on the steel plates on both sides of the walls was negligible. The comparison of the experimental results with the evaluation equations showed that the structural behavior of SSC walls under shear control is close to that of the evaluation equations, but that the behavior of SSC walls under larger bending moments is not very close to that of the evaluation equations. The current evaluation equations for USC walls may be applied to the design of SSC walls because the structural walls of nuclear power plants are not subjected to large in plane bending moments.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.83-90
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• 2017

Concrete structure for nuclear power plant is mass concrete structure with large wall depth and easily permits cracking in early age due to hydration heat and drying shrinkage. It always needs cooling water so that usually located near to sea shore. The crack on concrete surface permits rapid chloride intrusion and also causes more rapid corrosion in the steel. In the study, the effect of age and crack width on chloride diffusion is evaluated for the concrete for nuclear power plant with 6000 psi strength. For the work, various crack widths with 0.0~1.4 mm are induced and accelerated diffusion test is performed for concrete with 56 days, 180days, and 365 days. With increasing crack width over 1.0mm, diffusion coefficient is enlarged to 2.7~3.1 times and significant reduction of diffusion is evaluated due to age effect. Furthermore, apparent diffusion coefficient and surface chloride content are evaluated for the concrete with various crack width exposed to atmospheric zone with salt spraying at the age of 180 days. The results are also analyzed with those from accelerated diffusion test.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.715-722
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• 2011

In this paper, the behavior of nuclear-power plant subjected to an aircraft impact is performed using the parallel analysis. In the erstwhile study of an aircraft impact to the nuclear-power plant, it has been used that the impact load is applied at the local area by using the impact load-time history function of Riera, and the target structures have been restricted to the simple RC(Reinforced Concrete) walls or RC buildings. However, in this paper, the analysis of an aircraft impact is performed by using a real aircraft model similar to the Boeing 767 and a fictitious nuclear-power plant similar to the real structure, and an aircraft model is verified by comparing the generated history of the aircraft crash against the rigid target with another history by using the Riera's function which is allowable in the impact evaluation guide, NEI07-13(2009). Also, in general, it is required too much time for the hypervelocity impact analysis due to the contact problems between two or more adjacent physical bodies and the high nonlinearity causing dynamic large deformation, so there is a limitation with a single CPU alone to deal with these problems effectively. Therefore, in this paper, Message-Passing MIMD type of parallel analysis is performed by using self-constructed Linux-Cluster system to improve the computational efficiency, and in order to evaluate the parallel performance, the four cases of analysis, i.e. plain concrete, reinforced concrete, reinforced concrete with bonded containment liner plate, steel-plate concrete structure, are performed and discussed.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.449-455
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• 2011

Recently, international collaborative research which was organized at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in India, was conducted to develop for pressure capacity and nonlinear behavior of PHWR 1/4 scale nuclear containment building between experimental test and numerical code. In this paper, a nonlinear finite element analysis was carried out in order to predict ultimate pressure capacity and nonlinear behavior of the 1/4 scale containment building. The 1/4 scale containment building is consisted of basemat, cylinder wall, dome and 4-buttress. For the finite element analysis, commercial program ABAQUS was used. Finite element models including concrete, rebar and tendon have been developed for assessment of ultimate pressure capacity and failure mode for nuclear containment building. From the analysis results, first crack of the concrete, the yielding of the rebar and ultimate capacity pressure occurred at $1.6P_d$(design pressure), $3.36P_d$ and $4.0P_d$, respectively.