An estimation of the effect of steel liner on the ultimate bearing capacity of prestressed concrete containment

Three dimensional FEM model is used to estimate the effect of steel liner on the ultimate bearing capacity of a prestressed concrete containment. The model is subjected to internal pressure exceeding LOCA pressure that is increased up to the failure of the structure. By comparison with the experiment described in the literature and with the similar model without steel liner, it is concluded that the liner can increase the bearing capacity of the containment by up to 40%. The 3D model is also exploited for verification of plausibility of previously created set of partial models of the same containment, leading to confirmation of the hypothesis that it is possible to model the behavior of the containment with relatively high precision and low time consumption by a set of simplified models with properly set boundary conditions.