Investigation of the seismic behaviour of structural and non-structural components in industrial facilities by means of shaking table tests

Abstract

Industrial facilities consist of the primary load-carrying structure and various process engineering components (secondary structures), which under seismic loading, may exhibit significant damage that may threaten their structural integrity with severe consequences on the population, the environment and the economy. Structures in industrial facilities vary widely from flexible piping to rigid machining tools, and from small precision equipment to large cranes. Most machine installations have specific functions, including manufacturing precision, number of revolutions, production efficiency, and supply capacity, thus the functional failure is as important as structural failure. The paper presents the shaking table tests in the framework of the SPIF (Seismic Performance of multi-component systems in special risk Industrial Facilities) project. Special attention has been paid to the interactions between the primary structure and components as well as between the components among themselves. The steel structure of three stories has been designed, with the vessels on the first and second storey connected with the pipes. The structure has been planned for testing in two configurations: as fully fixed and with base isolation at the bottom. The focus is placed on the behaviour of the vessels and seismic performance of the pipes and connections has for the purpose of derivation of the design recommendations. Measuring accelerations, relative displacements of the components and pipe sections for different levels of peak ground acceleration is planned. The results will be used to increase the knowledge on definition of damage levels, limit states and performance for industrial facilities.