The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Behaviour of a piping system under seismic excitation -- experimental investigations of a spatial piping system supported by mechanical shock arrestors and steel energy absorbing devices under seismic excitation

Schneider, Stefan; Lee, Hong-Ming; Godden, William G.

UCB/EERC-82/03, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1982-05, 179 pages (530/S34/1982)

A half-scale model of a piping system from a nuclear reactor power plant was tested in its original design configuration using mechanical shock arrestors (snubbers), and in a revised configuration using ductile steel energy absorbers. The influence of the snubbers and different energy absorbers on the dynamic response of the pipe system is discussed; a direct one-to-one replacement of the snubbers by energy absorbers allowed a direct comparison of the results. The response of the structure was studied under all three direction components of ground motions, although a maximum of only two components (one horizontal and one vertical) was applied simultaneously. More than 100 tests were completed, using four artificial earthquakes as well as sinusoidal input. A study of damping behavior, frequency spectra, and hysteresis loops for both shock arrestors and energy absorbers facilitates an extensive interpretation of the experimental data.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-82-03.pdf (15 MB)