Propagation of cracks and damage in non aging linear viscoelastic media

Most of France's energy is nuclear. The reactor building comprises a internal and external containment. The internal containment is prestressed to limit the flow of leakage in the internal-external space. The prestress decreases during time by the creep of concrete. It may propagate the cracks by the accidental internal pressure. So we define two research problems: propagation of macro-cracks in viscoelastic structure; effective behavior of micro-cracked viscoelastic material. Firstly, we develop a Burger viscoelastic model of concrete with two approaches: numerical and analytical. Then we solve the problem of single cracks in developing thermodynamically the concept of energy release rate. In the third part we develop a viscoelastic model to study the effective behavior of micro-cracked materials in the case without propagation. The problem of propagation of microcracks is then studied by a numerical approach based on the 'representative pattern morphology'. These studies are finally applied to solve the problems of crack propagation and damage of containment under accidental internal pressure. (authors)