Nuclear Power Plant Prestressed Concrete Containment Vessel Structure Monitoring during Integrated Leakage Rate Testing Using Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors

Abstract

As the last barrier of nuclear reactor, prestressed concrete containment vessels (PCCVs) play an important role in nuclear power plants (NPPs). To test the mechanical property of PCCV during the integrated leakage rate testing (ILRT), a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor was used to monitor concrete strain. In addition, a finite element method (FEM) model was built to simulate the progress of the ILRT. The results showed that the strain monitored by FBG had the same trend compared to the inner pressure variation. The calculation results showed a similar trend compared with the monitoring results and provided much information about the locations in which the strain sensors should be installed. Therefore, it is confirmed that FBG sensors and FEM simulation are very useful in PCCV structure monitoring.

Keywords

• prestressed concrete containment vessel (PCCV)
• fiber Bragg grating (FBG)
• integrated leakage rate test (ILRT)
• finite element method (FEM)
• structure health monitoring (SHM)