Speaker
Description
Building 245 at CERN is foreseen that will house the new Main Power Supply of the Proton Synchroton Booster (PSB) accelerator ring, in the frame of the 2 GeV energy increase requested by the Large Hadron Collider Injectors Upgrade (LIU) program.
This building is made of two parts: converter hall (two storey steel structure) and technical building (two storey concrete structure). Different rooms host capacitor banks, magnetic field measuring equipment, electric switchgears and UPS systems, pumping station equipment and electrical cabinets needed for its operation. A holistic approach was needed to deal with the required structural safety verifications, because of the presence of either industrial and natural hazards. In particular, significant fire risk is present in the converter hall and required a proper verification of the most exposed elements. Moreover, a relevant explosion risk is present in the technical building due to the presence of the capacitor banks. Natural hazards, such as earthquake, strong winds, etc., have been considered in the global structural assessment of the bearing elements.
This presentation shows the main steps of the required structural safety verification performed on this building with reference to the applicable standards, in particular the Eurocodes. The performance-based approach and the safety verification details of the main unprotected steel elements toward the fire action are illustrated. The case of a capacitor explosion is then presented, showing the characterization of the behaviour of the component and the identification of the failure modes. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the effects of a secondary explosion consequent to the identified worst case conditions are then presented. The evaluated blast mitigation measures, based on an optimization of the venting pattern, and the structural assessment of the concrete elements by means of non-linear finite element modelling is shown. Finally, the structural analyses for the horizontal loads due to the design earthquake are presented.
