The PACE-1450 Test Campaign - Leakage Behaviour of a Pre-Stressed Concrete Containment Wall Segment

Investigating nuclear power plant containments under accidental conditions obviously leads to the question of possible leakage through cracks of the pre-stressed concrete containment. In the last decades a number of civil engineering R&D programs dedicated to theoretical and experimental analyses have been performed. For the PACE-1450 experiment a leakage testing facility for pre-stressed curved specimen has been built in the laboratory of the Materials Testing and Research Institute (MPA Karlsruhe) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The test campaign has now been successfully finished with the evaluation of gained results still ongoing. The first half of the campaign was mainly dedicated to the cracking of the realistically reinforced specimen while the second half was focussing on the leakage behaviour of the cracked specimen. In the tests cold air, heated air and air-steam mixtures were used.