Flexural behavior and design of steel-plate composite (SC) walls for accident thermal loading

Modular steel-plate composite (SC) safety-related nuclear power plant structures must be designed to resist accident thermal and mechanical loads. The design accident thermal load represents the condition where high pressure and temperature steam is released as result of a mechanical failure and applied against the surfaces of power plant structural walls. The effect of heating and pressure can have both short and long term effects on the mechanical integrity of SC structures including degradation and cracking of concrete infill, residual stresses, and out-of-plane deformations. The purpose of this research is to study the effects of thermal and mechanical loads on the out-of-plane flexural response of SC walls and to develop simplified equations that can be used to predict behavior. Four experimental beam tests are reported that represent full-scale cross-sections of SC walls subjected to combinations of mechanical and thermal loads. The study determined that thermal loads reduce the out-of-plane flexural stiffness of SC walls. For the ambient condition, the flexural stiffness closely matches a conventional elastic cracked-transformed model, and at elevated temperatures, the stiffness is reduced to a fully-cracked flexural stiffness that only takes into account the stiffness of the steel faceplates. A method is presented for estimating the thermal curvature, ϕ_th, and thermal moment, M_th, resulting from unequal heating of opposing faces of an SC wall. Based on the tests in this study, the application of accident thermal loads did not result in a reduction of the flexural strength of the SC section.