TESTING AND ANALYSIS OF CAP CONCRETE STRESS AND STRAIN DUE TO SHRINKAGE, CREEP, AND EXPANSION FINAL REPORT

In-situ decommissioning of Reactors P- and R- at the Savannah River Site will require filling the reactor vessels with a special concrete based on materials such as magnesium phosphate, calcium aluminate or silica fume. Then the reactor vessels will be overlain with an 8 ft. thick layer of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) steel reinforced concrete, called the 'Cap Concrete'. The integrity of this protective layer must be assured to last for a sufficiently long period of time to avoid ingress of water into the reactor vessel and possible movement of radioactive contamination into the environment. During drying of this Cap Concrete however, shrinkage strains are set up in the concrete as a result of diffusion and evaporation of water from the top surface. This shrinkage varies with depth in the poured slab due to a non-uniform moisture distribution. This differential shrinkage results in restraint of the upper layers with larger shrinkage by lower layers with lesser displacements. Tensile stresses can develop at the surface from the strain gradients in the bulk slab, which can lead to surface cracking. Further, a mechanism called creep occurs during the curing period or early age produces strains under the action of restraining forces. To investigate the potential for surface cracking, an experimental and analytical program was started under TTQAP SRNL-RP-2009-01184. Slab sections made of Cap Concrete mixture were instrumented with embedded strain gages and relative humidity sensors and tested under controlled environmental conditions of 23 C and relative humidities (RH) of 40% and 80% over a period of 50 days. Calculation methods were also developed for predictions of stress development in the full-scale concrete placement over the reactor vessels. These methods were evaluated by simulating conditions for the test specimens and the calculation results compared to the experimental data. A closely similar test with strain gages was performed by Kim and Lee for a concrete mixture that did not employ humidity sensors and the admixtures used in this program. Yuan and Wan tried to predict the shrinkage strains and stresses in the Kim and Lee experiment, but did not include a creep analysis. Grasley and Lange conducted full restraint load tests on a concrete prism instrumented with humidity sensors over a 7 day curing period. The hypothetical case of full-scale placement of the Cap Concrete was also analyzed using the developed analytical methods. The calculation performed in this report is for scoping purposes only