Creep behavior under sustained temperature gradient in a model of prestressed concrete reactor vessels

This paper mainly describes the effects of differential thermal creep on the behaviors of a prestressed concrete pressure vessel model, which was subjected to long-term temperature gradient across the wall up to 600C for a duration of about four months. The height, the outer diameter and the wall thickness of the hollow-cylinder model with top and bottom slabs were 350, 300, and 50 cm respectively, which corresponds to a scale of about 1/10 to the actual structures. The model was prestressed circumferentially and vertically. (orig.)