EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANT CONCRETE CONTAINMENT STRENGTHENED WITH EXTERNALLY WRAPPED CARBON FIBER REINFORCED POLYMER SHEETS

Concrete containment of nuclear power plant is the final shield structure in case of nuclear leakage during an accident. A 1/10 scaled model of a prestressed concrete containment was studied in this work. The model containment was loaded by internal hydraulic pressure which simulated the design pressure during the accident. Hundreds of sensors and data-collect systems were used in the experiment to measure the response of the containment. The containment was first loaded to the damage pressure and then strengthened with externally wrapping carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheet around the external surface of the containment. Nonlinear finite element analysis model was established using ANSYS to analyze the performance of the strengthened structure. Both experimental and finite element analysis results indicate that the CFRP sheets are able to not only increase the capacity of concrete containment to resist the internal pressure, but also restraint the deformation and crack propagation effectively. The finite element model generates good agreements with the test results, which can be used to predict the performance of containment which is strengthened with CFRP sheets.