Development of a constitutive law for accurate prediction of time dependent deformation of OPC based cementitious material at elevated temperatures

Researchers:

• Shamseldin Abdo
• Roman Wan-Wendner (supervisor)
• Robby Caspeele (supervisor)
• Seetharam Suresh (supervisor)
• Phung Quoc Tri (supervisor)

Description:

Nuclear power plants, now a days, are considered to be one of the good solutions for producing electricity without harming the environment. The concept of the nuclear power plants is using the nuclear fission to heat water and produce high pressurized water steam, which in turn spins the large turbines that generate electricity. Even though, the operation phases are safe for environment, the disposal of the nuclear radioactive wastes should be carefully sealed and placed where no any possible physical interaction between the ambient environment and the high radioactive waste could take place. In Belgium, the geological disposal gallery concept is used to safely dispose these high radioactive wastes (HRW) under the ground. The HRW are capsulated in super containers and then placed in the geological disposal gallery. Super container is a structure that is especially designed for packing high-level radioactive waste for disposal. this high-level radioactive waste produces high temperature heat for long periods of time, which lasts some times for hundreds of years. Thus, the objective of this research project is therefore to explore these time dependent deformation processes at elevated temperature and different Relative humidity conditions from a phenomenological perspective via experimental and numerical investigations. The main deliverable of the thesis will be a new constitutive law that can predict multi-decade creep and shrinkage strains at the relevant elevated temperatures.