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The study of a large portion of a confined alluvial aquifer mainly used for agricultural purposes and located in the Southwest of Po River Basin (Northern Italy) is here illustrated. The hydrogeology of the studied area was first... more
The study of a large portion of a confined alluvial aquifer mainly used for agricultural purposes and located in the Southwest of Po River Basin (Northern Italy) is here illustrated. The hydrogeology of the studied area was first regionally investigated and characterised in terms of reservoir geometry, hydraulic head and trial values of transmissivity distribution. Then pumping tests have been
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ABSTRACT Guidelines for designing a concrete storage module and for its integration into a solar plant, respecting constraints linked both to an adequate solar field operation and to the production system based on ORC, are described. A... more
ABSTRACT Guidelines for designing a concrete storage module and for its integration into a solar plant, respecting constraints linked both to an adequate solar field operation and to the production system based on ORC, are described. A series of simplified procedures are developed to be used for a first module design and more sophisticated (even if more expensive) simulation techniques via the Finite Element Method are checked and upgraded. Once the ongoing experimental phase on a scaled storage prototype at the ENEA site of Casaccia has been concluded, the obtained data will be used for completing both the setup of the calculation instruments and the R&D activity dealing with the development of an appropriate concrete mixing, optimising its chemical–physical and durability performances, and with the module integration within a CSP system.
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Starting from the R&D experience acquired, within the Italian context, in the field of the development of new technologies for solar energy exploitation, structural design criteria have been selected here to define a guideline for steel... more
Starting from the R&D experience acquired, within the Italian context, in the field of the development of new technologies for solar energy exploitation, structural design criteria have been selected here to define a guideline for steel structures design and assessment of components of parabolic-trough solar concentrators. The main codes of practice used in Italy and in the European community have been considered and design criteria chosen to find a compromise between requirements of rules that should be followed precisely and costs. Loads, actions, and more generally, the whole design procedure has been considered in agreement with the limit state method; a new approach is critically and carefully proposed to use this method in designing and testing “special structures,” such as the one analyzed here (e.g., wind and snow actions are evaluated and newly interpreted according to both the angular position of the collectors and the characteristic effects). A method for evaluating varia...
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Strain localisation in concrete is reproduced by introducing a softening law coupled with damage in the stress-strain relationship and also considering coupling with damage. A quasi-static approach is developed, which requires initial... more
Strain localisation in concrete is reproduced by introducing a softening law coupled with damage in the stress-strain relationship and also considering coupling with damage. A quasi-static approach is developed, which requires initial imperfections to trigger off localisation. The model takes into account thermal, hygral and mechanical transient behaviour of concrete, through non-linear heat and mass transfer equations expressed as functions
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In this paper an efficient parallel algorithm to solve a three-dimensional problem of subsidence above exploited gas reservoirs is presented. The parallel program is developed on a cluster of workstations. The parallel virtual machine... more
In this paper an efficient parallel algorithm to solve a three-dimensional problem of subsidence above exploited gas reservoirs is presented. The parallel program is developed on a cluster of workstations. The parallel virtual machine (PVM) system is used to handle communications among networked workstations. The method has advantages such as numbering of the finite element mesh in an arbitrary manner,
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ABSTRACT SUMMARY The overall thermo-hygro-mechanical behavior of concrete is to be investigated, because its bearing capacity is required together with its shielding properties, specifically when concrete structures are exposed to... more
ABSTRACT SUMMARY The overall thermo-hygro-mechanical behavior of concrete is to be investigated, because its bearing capacity is required together with its shielding properties, specifically when concrete structures are exposed to high-energy neutron fluxes, which represent the next generation facilities designed for the production of high energy radioactive ion beams in physics research. Irradiation in the form of either fast and thermal neutrons, primary gamma rays or gamma rays produced as a result of neutron capture, are learnt to affect concrete as well as neutron fluences of the order of 1019 n/cm2 and gamma radiation doses of 1010 rad seem to become critical for concrete strength. The collection of data on concrete samples, variously exposed to neutron radiation, has allowed for defining a law for radiation damage within the FEM research code NEWCON3D, assessing the 3D coupled thermo-hygro-mechanical behavior of concrete, modeled as a multiphase porous medium, both at the macroscale and the mesoscale level. The required damage law is thought to be a function of the neutron flux impinging the concrete shielding wall, and a good estimate of this quantity has been provided by means of a Monte Carlo code developed by CERN and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics of Milan, Italy; this code handles radiation transport calculations and represents at this day one of the most reliable procedures for dealing with the interaction of radiation and matter. The suggested procedure for the radiation damage evaluation has allowed for discussing on differences between mesolevel and macrolevel approaches. Stochastic contour maps of the expected radiation field, properly interfaced with the numerical FE code, have allowed for obtaining a more precise evaluation of the radiation damage front as well as its evolution in time. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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ABSTRACT In the framework of the activities foreseen for PRIMA (Padova Research on Injector Megavolt Accelerated) the MITICA neutral beam injector plays the role of main experiment, aiming to build, operate, test and optimize a full power... more
ABSTRACT In the framework of the activities foreseen for PRIMA (Padova Research on Injector Megavolt Accelerated) the MITICA neutral beam injector plays the role of main experiment, aiming to build, operate, test and optimize a full power and full scale prototype of the ITER Heating Neutral Beam Injector [1], [2] and [3].The entire MITICA system will be housed in special buildings, suitably designed to provide all the necessary supports, interfaces and shielding walls for nuclear radiation safety. Therefore an integrated design of the MITICA system and relevant buildings shall be developed and verified carefully, considering all the different configurations, operational modes and load combinations.This paper presents the numerical models and the results of MITICA assembly integrated analyses. The model takes into account properly constraints to ground and surrounding buildings, to study and verify the static and seismic response of the whole assembly.The load cases are defined and the numerical analyses described. Load definition and analyses have been performed considering the requirements of both the ASME [4] and the National Standard NTC2008 [5] for the seismic verification of structures subject to design response spectra.The obtained results are finally shown in detail and discussed, also comparing some different design options for design optimization.
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This paper investigates reservoir compaction and resulting surface subsidence during the exploitation of a gas reservoir and in the period after well shutdown. A substantial difference in behaviour results when assuming elastic and... more
This paper investigates reservoir compaction and resulting surface subsidence during the exploitation of a gas reservoir and in the period after well shutdown. A substantial difference in behaviour results when assuming elastic and elastoplastic constitutive relationships for the reservoir rock and surroundings. Further, a correction is introduced to account for capillary effects, which strongly modify the behaviour especially after shutdown