Parametric structural integrity assessment of a nuclear reactor reinforced containment and interior components under postulated aircraft collision conditions

The security of containment structures has been highlighted as a vital component of isolating and protecting internal devices in nuclear power plants from various hypothetical hazards. Despite several recent impressive studies focused on external events such as earthquake and aircraft crash, further elaborate numerical approaches are required to ensure confinement of radwaste materials against severe loads. In this paper, dynamic analyses were carried out to examine the influence of aircraft crashes on a typical reinforced concrete containment and interior components. Firstly, a specific referential force-time history was generated based on Riera function and compared with the impact force exerted by an artificial airplane through a finite element analysis combined with a smoothed-particle hydrodynamics of fuel for validation. Subsequently, systematic numerical analyses were carried out for the containment under diverse postulated aircraft collision conditions. Stresses and strains of each part were calculated, and displacements as well as damages of the concrete due to crushing and cracking were also evaluated through comparison of the corresponding allowable criteria. Moreover, effects of key parameters such as crash angles, locations, and velocities were investigated. As results, central part of the concrete wall was determined to be the most vulnerable and failure based on the conservative strain criteria was estimated at this region under 200 m/s of speed regardless of impact angles.