Seismic design of industrial facilities

Abstract eng:
Industrial facilities are typically complex systems consisting of a primary loadcarrying structure with multiple technical installations like tanks, vessels and pipes, which are generally designated as secondary structures. Due to high cost of their process engineering components and the risk of releasing harmful substances into air, water and ground if damages occur, industrial facilities must be designed to safely withstand seismic loading. The design must consider both the primary structure and the secondary structures as well as the dynamic interaction effects between structural and non-structural components. This paper presents an integrated design concept for industrial facilities which is based on well-established displacement based procedures to cover the seismic behaviour of the primary structure and deformation-sensitive secondary structures like pipes and multi-storey distillation columns. Due to the specific situation in industrial units regarding, for example, the typically large eccentricities between the floor mass- and stiffness centres or the influence of higher vibration modes, some difficulties may arise during the practical application of the standard capacity spectrum method. These are discussed and corresponding solutions are proposed. The concept is illustrated by an application example of a typical production unit.

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