Failure simulation of nuclear pressure vessel under severe accident conditions: Part I - Material constitutive modeling

This paper proposes a combined plastic and creep constitutive model of A533B1 pressure vessel steel to simulate progressive deformation of nuclear pressure vessels under severe accident conditions. To develop the model, recent tensile test data covering a wide range of temperatures (from RT to 1,100 °C) and strain rates (from 0.001%/s to 1.0%/s) was used. Comparison with experimental data confirms that the proposed combined plastic and creep model can well reflect effects of temperature and strain rate on tensile behaviour up to failure. In the companion paper (Part II), the proposed model will be used to simulate OECD lower head failure (OLHF) test data.