Prestressed Concrete Reactor Containment Behaviour in Test Condition Taking into Account Ageing Effects (VeRCoRs)

NEA/CSNI/R(2019)15
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The VeRCoRs facility mock-up is a reactor containment building at 1/3 scale. The mock-up is instrumented so that its behaviour is monitored from the beginning of construction. More than 700 sensors and 2 km of optic fibre cables have been positioned in the concrete, on the rebars and on the prestressing tendons (grouted tendons). The experimental VeRCoRs campaign consisted of daily measurement of all of the sensors and an air pressure test of the mock-up every year. Hundreds of samples of concrete were prepared and tested to determine their material behaviours and parameters, including hydration, strengths, fracture energy and elastic properties, drying, shrinkage (autogenous and drying), creep (basic and drying), and permeability.

This report summarises the results provided by member organisations of the concrete subgroup of the WGIAGE to the benchmark exercise. The objective of the benchmark was to improve participants’ capability to predict the ageing effects on concrete containment. The benchmark, which is described in this report, was an open benchmark done with the results of two identical pressurisation tests of the VeRCoRs mock-up.