Durability and Safety of Concrete Structures in the Nuclear Context

In the field of nuclear energy, very challenging durability problems are being faced, such as how could the service life of present nuclear containments be prolonged and how can the durability of a radioactive storage on the very long term (several centuries) be assured? These difficult questions in a classical civil engineering view are even more complicated in the field of nuclear energy where the structures are massive and the safety of the installations has to be considered with specific care due to the related stakes. For concrete structures like the containment of nuclear power plants and the storages of radioactive waste, these stakes will be clarified with some examples of research concerning the mechanical behavior of concrete and concrete structures (at early age, in service on long scales of time and in the event of an accident), the durability of the concrete structures (leaching, swelling due to DEF) and the couplings between mechanics and durability. Finally, the importance of probabilistic aspects in durability and the inherent difficulties will be shown.

[1]  Nanthilde Reviron.  Étude du fluage des bétons en traction : application aux enceintes de confinement des centrales nucléaires à eau sous pression , 2009 .

[2]  Farid Benboudjema,et al.  Coupling between leaching and creep of concrete , 2008 .

[3]  Benoît Bissonnette,et al.  Prediction of elastic properties of cement pastes at early ages , 2010 .

[4]  Gilles Pijaudier-Cabot,et al.  Effects and interactions of temperature and stress-level related damage on permeability of concrete , 2007 .

[5]  J. J. Brooks,et al.  30-year creep and shrinkage of concrete , 2005 .

[6]  J. Torrenti,et al.  A separation of scales homogenization analysis for the modelling of calcium leaching in concrete , 2006 .

[7]  Vít S˘milauer,et al.  Microstructure-based micromechanical prediction of elastic properties in hydrating cement paste , 2006 .

[8]  Luc Taerwe,et al.  Degree of hydration-based description of mechanical properties of early age concrete , 1996 .

[9]  Olivier Coussy,et al.  Propagation Fronts during Calcium Leaching and Chloride Penetration , 2000 .

[10]  Zdeněk P. Bažant,et al.  Drying of concrete as a nonlinear diffusion problem , 1971 .

[11]  Franz-Josef Ulm,et al.  Chemoporoplasticity of Calcium Leaching in Concrete , 1999 .

[12]  Claude Boulay,et al.  Chemo-mechanical coupling behaviour of leached concrete: Part I: Experimental results , 2007 .

[13]  M. Collepardi,et al.  A state-of-the-art review on delayed ettringite attack on concrete , 2003 .

[14]  Karen Scrivener,et al.  Influence of the storage conditions on the dimensional changes of heat-cured mortars , 2001 .

[15]  L A Graf,et al.  Effect of Relative Humidity on Expansion and Microstructure of Heat-Cured Mortars , 2007 .

[16]  Farid Benboudjema,et al.  Early-age behaviour of concrete nuclear containments , 2008 .

[17]  Franz-Josef Ulm,et al.  Mechanical properties of calcium-leached cement pastes: Triaxial stress states and the influence of the pore pressures , 2001 .

[18]  Farid Benboudjema,et al.  A viscoelastic approach for the assessment of the drying shrinkage behaviour of cementitious materials , 2007 .

[19]  Gilles Chanvillard,et al.  Modelling Elasticity of a Hydrating Cement Paste , 2007 .

[20]  Olivier Coussy,et al.  Couplings in early-age concrete: From material modeling to structural design , 1998 .

[21]  Franz-Josef Ulm,et al.  Creep and shrinkage of concrete: physical origins and practical measurements , 2001 .

[22]  F. Adenot,et al.  Modelling of the corrosion of the cement paste by deionized water , 1992 .