Building construction damage limiting

Damage Limiting Construction Construction of equipment (building) with weak sections to limit the damage to the equipment (building). The weak sections fail early and prevent damage to the rest of the equipment (building). 

Figure 6-12 depicts various building layouts incorporating spatial separation and damage limiting construction. 

If the stress a in Eq. 2.93 is replaced by allowance stress [a], the resulted R is the nearest distance with building not being damaged, or safe distance. If the stress is replaced by limit strength aB, the resulted R is the destruction range. Table 2.4 lists the limited strengths of common construction materials. 

In the early years of nuclear power development, the cores of several research reactors in the US were deliberatedly damaged by experimental power excursions in order to study the behavior of the fission products under such conditions. To be sure, the characteristic data of these reactors, such as the nature of the nuclear fuel, the design of the safety installations, the construction of the buildings etc., showed great differences from that of modem power reactors so that the results are of only limited value for the assessment of severe accidents. However, certain qualitative impressions can be derived from these results, as can be seen from the summary paper of Smith (1981). 

---