Characterisation of the behaviour of containment equipment under mechanical and thermal stresses in STARMANIA facility

Most of the containment equipment used in the French nuclear facilities could be considered as construction products, like fire dampers or fire doors. So, to assess their behaviour under thermal stresses, these equipment are concerned by fire resistance regulations as French regulations on construction products or European standards. However, the realisation of experimental tests on fire and numerical simulations, especially at the IRSN, have shown that the development of a fire in a contained facility is not only characterised by an increasing temperature but also by pressure stresses strong enough to become mechanical stresses. Because of a lack of experimental facilities, no data was available on the behaviour of containment equipment under pressure stresses representative of facility accidental working conditions. According to this observation, a new experimental facility, called STARMANIA, was built at the nuclear research centre of Saclay. The main objective of the STARMANIA facility is to determine the mechanical strength which is the differential pressure value corresponding to the equipment failure but also to determine the aeraulic resistance evolution especially on the unknown working range of the equipment. Descriptions of the STARMANIA experimental facility and the presentation of typical results obtained during fire dampers and fire doors tests are given. (authors)