Analytical response of concrete structures subjected to high temperatures

Scenarios of nuclear reactor safety consider the possibility that structural concrete may be subjected to very high temperatures and thus raise the concern of containment integrity. This paper describes the analytical models and numerical tools that were developed for the purpose of studying the high temperature behavior of concrete. A formulation for computing heat conduction and stress analysis is presented and incorporated into the computer code TEMP-STRESS. The code was used to simulate the high temperature concrete response of an existing experiment. Improvements to the analytical model, which represent current research efforts, are also presented