Study on Piping Response Under Multiple Excitation: Part 1 — Triple Shaking Table Test of Piping Having Three-Supporting Points

<jats:p>The piping in a nuclear power plant is laid across multiple floors of a single building or two buildings, which are supported at many points. As the piping is excited by multiple inputs from the supporting points during an earthquake, seismic response analysis by multiple excitations is needed to obtain the exact seismic response of the piping. However, few experiments involving such multiple excitations have been performed to verify the validity of multiple excitation analysis. Therefore, analysis of the seismic design of piping in Japan is performed by the enveloped Floor Response Spectrum (FRS), which covers all floor response spectra at all supporting points. The piping response estimated by enveloped FRS is conservative in most cases compared with the actual seismic response by multiple excitations. To perform rational seismic design and evaluation, it is important to investigate the seismic response by multiple excitations and verify the validity of the analysis method by multiple-excitation test.</jats:p> <jats:p>This paper reports on the result of the shaking test using triple uni-axial shaking tables and a 3-dimensional piping model (89.1mm in diameter and 5.5mm thickness). The piping model was fixed to three shaking tables, meaning three. Different inputs were possible. By the shaking test, dynamic behavior under multiple excitations was confirmed, and data to verify multiple-excitation analysis was obtained.</jats:p>