Containment evaluation against ground shock in rock

Structures, systems and components that are essential for the safe operation and shutdown of a nuclear power plant may be subject to a variety of impulsive loads. This paper presents an experimental and numerical evaluation of the influence of ground shock and airblast forces on the structural response of a 1:8 scale reactor containment structure founded on schist. The numerical model, including both free air and schist properties, was programmed and linked to finite-element software as its user-provided subroutines. The numerical and experimental scaled model results demonstrate good agreement with each other. The full-scale simulation of typical reactor containment was subjected to surface explosions through the developed relationship for structural response analysis. The proposed methodology can be employed to evaluate the blast response of a concrete shell type containment structure and to estimate the integrity of containment.