PSI - Issue 64

Federico Pinto et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 64 (2024) 766–773 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000–000

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corresponding to the sector SE near the Service Building. Also, among them these is the point MD01 belonging to the dome, although it should be considered that the remaining displacement shown in the table corresponds to the instantaneous value obtained just after the depressurization since the transducer had to be removed at that moment for operational reasons. The observed differences could be attributed to the local changes in stiffness produced by the permanent and temporary openings and their perimeter reinforcements. Table 5 shows the strains at maximum pressure calculated with the numerical model together with the averages of measured strains estimated according to the described procedure at maximum pressure and 3 days after complete depressurization. It is again observed that values for line L4 show an atypical behavior. Measurements made during the pressure test carried out in August 1981 had also shown a different pattern of displacements along line L4, where a decrease in height is observed due to an apparent stiffening at medium and high levels of the wall in this quadrant. In view of the particular behavior of the wall panel associated with line L4, additional analyses were made with the model considering an elastic modulus, E = 4.00×10 7 kN/m 2 for this panel, keeping the elastic modulus of the other panels at E = 3.20×10 7 kN/m 2 (see Table 3). Such value may be expected due to the presence of a higher density of steel reinforcements in the temporary opening located in that area, produced by the addition of passive steel bars at the perimeter of this opening. One relevant observation of these calculations is that the buttresses produce a significant decoupling of the behavior in adjacent panels, independently of the stiffness assigned to each of them. The analysis of the results also shows that the values of the parameters are almost identical to those obtained with the originally adjusted model, with the exception of the points located along line L4, where they lead to a better correspondence with the measured values. The results of this last analysis are not included in this paper due to space limitations.

Dome

Fig. 4. Total displacements due to pressure and temperature.