Response of Concrete Containment Structures Considering Soil-Structure Interaction Effects

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A great deal of effort has been made in the past in order to understand and numerically formulate thesoil-structure interaction (SSI) effect. Of particular interest in this study is to appropriately analyze and designcontainment structures which are built underground that interact with the surrounding soil. This is of particularsignificance when small module reactors (SMR's) are hosted in a containment structure that is builtunderground. Any damage to the containment structure could have significant consequences on SMRs. Inthese structures, for functionality reasons, crack and leakage control is of prime design consideration. In theproposed study, it is required to determine as how the presence of the soil can affect the dynamic response ofthe containment structures. In this relation, a rationale method to determine the response modification factors inrelation to above ground structures will need to be determined. In this investigation, the major issues are thedevelopment of cracks in the vulnerable regions of the containment due to different loading applicationsincluding seismic. The crack-leakage potential in in these structures needs to be considered. Current designcodes and standards do not address this issue and it is left to design engineers to conservatively consider it intheir design. This is an area that requires a detailed investigation. The main objective of this research is toinvestigate the dynamic behavior of underground concrete containment structures. The study will be carried outusing a rigorous finite element (FE) method capable of including the effect of soil-structure interactionconsidering both geometric and material non-linearities in a three-dimensional (3D) domain. During the courseof this study, an investigation will be carried out to determine how different soil types as defined in buildingcodes affect the dynamic response of such structures.