The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has initiated a Structural Aging Program at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to identify potential structural safety issues related to continued service of nuclear power plants and to establish criteria for evaluating and resolving these issues. One of the tasks in this program focuses on the establishment of a Structural Materials Information Center where data and information on the time variation of concrete and other structural material properties under the influence of pertinent environmental stressors and aging factors are being collected and assembled into a data base. This data base will be used to assist in the prediction of potential long-term deterioration of critical structural components in nuclear power plants and to establish limits on hostile environmental exposure for these structures and materials. Two complementary data base formats have been developed. The Structural Materials Handbook is an expandable, hard-copy reference document that contains complete sets of data and information for selected portland cement concrete, metallic reinforcement, prestressing tendon, and structural steel materials. Baseline data, reference properties and environmental information are presented in the handbook as tables, notes and graphs. The handbook, which will be published in four volumes, serves as the information source for the electronic data base. The Structural Materials Electronic Data Base is accessible by an IBM-compatible personal computer and provides an efficient means for searching the various data base files to locate materials with similar properties. Properties will be reported in the International System of Units (SI) and in customary units whenever possible. 7 refs., 3 figs., 4 tabs
