In order to increase the seismic safety of nuclear power plant (NPP) structures, a technique to reduce the seismic load transmitted to the NPP structure by using a seismic isolation device such as a lead-rubber bearing has recently been actively researched. In seismic design of NPP structures, three directional (two horizontal and one vertical directions) artificial synthetic earthquakes (G0 group) corresponding to the standard design spectrum are generally used. In this study, seismic analysis was performed by using three directional artificial synthetic earthquakes (M0 group) corresponding to the maximum-minimum spectrum reflecting uncertainty of incident direction of earthquake load. The design basis earthquake (DBE) and the beyond design basis earthquakes (BDBEs are equal to 150%, 167%, and 200% DBE) of G0 and M0 earthquake groups were respectively generated for 30 sets and used for the seismic analysis. The purpose of this study is to compare seismic responses and seismic fragility curves of seismically isolated NPP structures subjected to DBE and BDBE. From the seismic fragility curves, the probability of failure of the seismic isolation system when the peak ground acceleration (PGA) is 0.5 g is about 5% for the M0 earthquake group and about 3% for the G0 earthquake group.
The seismic safety of nuclear power plants has always been emphasized by the effects of accidents. In general, the seismic safety evaluation of nuclear power plants carries out a seismic probabilistic safety assessment. The current probabilistic safety assessment assumes that damage to the structure, system, and components (SSCs) occurs independently to each other or perfect dependently to each other. In case of earthquake events, the failure event occurs with the correlation due to the correlation between the seismic response of the SSCs and the seismic performance of the SSCs. In this study, the EEMS (External Event Mensuration System) code is developed which can perform the seismic probabilistic safety assessment considering correlation. The developed code is verified by comparing with the multiplier n, which is for calculating the joint probability of failure, which is proposed by Mankamo. It is analyzed the changes in seismic fragility curves and seismic risks with correlation. As a result, it was confirmed that the seismic fragility curves and seismic risk change according to the failure correlation coefficient. This means that it is important to select an appropriate failure correlation coefficient in order to perform a seismic probabilistic safety assessment. And also, it was confirmed that carrying out the seismic probabilistic safety assessment in consideration of the seismic correlation provides more realistic results, rather than providing conservative or non-conservative results comparing with that damage to the SSCs occurs independently.
In this study, a design procedure for the practical application of the dampers to building structures under earthquake loads was presented by using earthquake response spectrum. Nonlinear time history results using a 10 story building structure installed with damper verified the effectiveness of the proposed procedure by showing that the structural response could be reduced to the target performance level for seismic loads. Since the proposed design procedures are based on response spectrum seismic analysis result of the original structure, the capacity, location and the number of damper and the consequent response reduction effects can be preliminarily determined without performing the nonlinear time history analysis.
Many reinforced concrete (RC) buildings constructed prior to 1980's lack important features guaranteeing ductile response under earthquake excitation. Structural components in such buildings, especially columns, do not satisfy the reinforcement details demanded by current seismic design codes. Columns with deficient reinforcement details may suffer significant damage when subjected to cyclic lateral loads. They can also experience rapid lateral strength degradation induced by shear failure. The objective of this study is to accurately simulate the load-deformation response of RC columns experiencing shear failure. In order to do so, model parameters are calibrated to the load-deformation response of 40 RC column specimens failed in shear. Multivariate stepwise regression analyses are conducted to develop the relationship between the model parameters and physical parameters of RC column specimens. It is shown that the proposed predictive equations successfully estimated the model parameters of RC column specimens with great accuracy. The proposed equations also showed better accuracy than the existing ones.
Diagonally reinforced concrete coupling beams (DRCBs) have been widely adopted in reinforced concrete (RC) bearing wall systems. DRCBs are known to act as a fuse element dissipating most of seismic energies imparted to the bearing wall systems during earthquakes. Despite such importance of DRCBs, the damage estimation of such components and the corresponding consequences within the knowledge of performance based seismic design framework is not well understood. In this paper, drift-based fragility functions are developed for in-plane loaded DRCBs. Fragility functions are developed to predict the damage and to decide the repair method required for DRCBs subjected to earthquake loading. Thirty-seven experimental results are collected from seventeen published literatures for this effort. Drift-based fragility functions are developed for four damage states of DRCBs subjected to cyclic and monotonic loading associated with minor cracking, severe cracking, onset of strength loss, and significant strength loss. Damage states are defined in a consistent manner. Cumulative distribution functions are fit to the empirical data and evaluated using standard statistical methods.
This research focuses on developing the Smart material with Grease adopted as a base oil to overcome a particle deposition caused by the MR fluid consisting of a silicon, which maximizing the characteristics and advantage of the MR fluid. By adopting the SMG fluid to a shear damper, this paper aimed to evaluate the control performance of it according to the variation of intensity of electric current(0 A, 0.5 A, 1.0 A, 1.5 A, 2.0 A, 2.5 A) and frequency(0.5 Hz, 1 Hz, 2 Hz). Subsequently, the usability of the SMG damper was analyzed by comparing the dynamic model of it to that of the other types of dampers(Power(Involution) Model, Bingham Model). As a result, DR, the performance indicator of semi-active damper, shows approximately 5 in a condition of 2 Hz. Also while confirming the excellent performance like the Power and the Bingham model, it raises the possibility to exploit it as the semi-active damper.