Author(s)

P. Koechlin, S. Moulin, S. Potapov & E. Champain

Abstract

In the context of nuclear projects, Electricité de France (EDF) studies the mechanical consequences of impact loads on reinforced concrete shell structures. We developed a numerical methodology to simulate this kind of accident. Both local behaviour in the impact zone and vibration of the whole structure are considered even if they belong to different fields: during impact, the local behaviour is a fast dynamics issue with strong material non-linearity whereas the structure shaking is a slow dynamics linear elastic problem which is similar to a seismic analysis. To treat properly the physical phenomena taking place on different time scales, our modelling strategy is based on a domain decomposition method implemented into EUROPLEXUS, a fast dynamic software. The non-linear local behaviour is described by a material law using resultant shell variables

Keywords