The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

The design of steel energy-absorbing restrainers and their incorporation into nuclear power plants for enhanced safety (final technical report, vol 4): Shaking table tests of piping systems with energy-absorbing restrainers

Stiemer, Siegfried F.; Godden, William G.

UCB/EERC-80/33, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1980-09-01, 83 pages (530/D38/1980/v.4)

This report presents results of shaking table tests of simple piping systems with energy-absorbing restrainers subjected to simulated seismic and thermal expansion loadings. In a future report, test results will be correlated with the results of computer analysis. The tests on the shaking table were carried out on an unscaled, three-sided, rectangular plane loop pipe filled with water and subjected to one- and two-dimensional shaking. The Taft, California, earthquake time history was used as an input for the shaking table motion. Replaceable, small ductile restrainers of several different stiffnesses were placed in three locations, two restraining motion in the vertical direction and one restraining motion in the horizontal direction. Test results confirmed that the energy dissipated by ductile action even in the small restrainers used in these tests provides an extremely effective means for reducing dynamic response. There is an overall trend for the seismic stresses in the pipe system to be significantly lower with these ductile devices than with elastic restrainers and this may also apply for seismic and thermal loading when compared with the standard design procedure using velocity-sensitive hydraulic snubbers.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-80-33.pdf (3 MB)