Some constitutive and computational aspects of coupled hydraulic-damage problems for leakage rate predictions of concrete vessels

Gilles Pijaudier-Cabot (1) , Frédéric Dufour (1) , Marta Choinska (1) , Abbas Krayani , Ludovic Jason (2) , Georges Chatzigeorgiou (3)

1 GeM - Institut de Recherche en Génie Civil et Mécanique
2 CEA - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives
3 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

This contribution presents a review of the works carried out at R&DO in Nantes, in collabora-tion with Electricité de France. The aim is the study of sensitive structures like containment vessels of nuclearpower plants, and the evaluation of their gas tightness more specifically. The objective is the computation ofthe leakage rate of vessels subjected to internal pressure (typically during integrity tests). It requires theevaluation of the material permeability, as a function of the moisture content in concrete and of the amount ofdamage. We focus mainly on the relationship between gas permeability and material damage, starting from anelastic-plastic-damage constitutive relation and analyzing the relationship with the permeability with the helpof a discrete (lattice) analysis. The global solution strategy relies on chained calculations, as for large sizestructures, fully coupled problems remains out of reach. An example on a representative structural element isprovided. This review concludes on some size effect analysis of damaged specimens, which shows that bothapproaches to cracking – discrete and continuous – exhibit the same effect of size on transfer properties ofstructural elements.

Domaines: Mécanique [physics.med-ph]; Matériaux

Gilles Pijaudier-Cabot, Frédéric Dufour, Marta Choinska, Abbas Krayani, Ludovic Jason, et al.. Some constitutive and computational aspects of coupled hydraulic-damage problems for leakage rate predictions of concrete vessels. Computational Modelling of Concrete Structures EURO-C, 2006, Mayrhofen, Austria. ⟨hal-01008933⟩