Effect of the Young modulus variability on the mechanical behaviour of a nuclear containment vessel

This study aims at investigating the influence of the Young modulus variability on the mechanical behaviour of a nuclear containment vessel in case of a loss of cooling agent accident and under the assumption of an elastic behaviour. To achieve this investigation, the Monte-Carlo Method is carried out thanks to a middleware which encapsulates the different components (random field generation, FE simulations) and enables calculations parallelisation. The main goal is to quantify the uncertainty propagation by comparing the maximal values of outputs of interest (orthoradial stress and Mazars equivalent strain) for each realisation of the considered random field with the ones obtained from a reference calculation taking into account uniform field (equal to the expected value of the random field). The Young modulus is supposed to be accurately represented by a weakly homogeneous random field and realisations are provided through its truncated Karhunen–Loève expansion. This study reveals that the expected value for the maximal equivalent strain in the structure is more important when considering the Young modulus spatial variability than the value obtained from a deterministic approach with a uniform Young modulus field. The influence of the correlation length is investigated too. Finally it is shown that there is no correlation between the maximal values location of equivalent strain and the ones where the Young modulus extreme values are observed for each realisation.