Analytical Study on Fragility Evaluation With Uncertainty Against Fault Displacement for Nuclear Power Plant Buildings

Abstract

Japan Nuclear Safety Institute had recently reported the pioneering deterministic evaluation approach for nuclear power plant under seismic induced fault displacement. But the uncertainty of fault displacement based on probabilistic hazard analysis is described to be greater than that of other natural phenomena e.g. earthquake ground motions or seismic acceleration vibration in the report. Furthermore, for plant-wide risk assessment against fault displacement hazards beyond design basis displacement level, it is seriously necessary to promote a series of fundamental studies and develop the standard procedures regarding not only accident sequence analysis but also fragility analysis of buildings and structures as well as components and piping systems. Based on the above background, the objective of this study is focusing to obtain basic fragility data for the aleatory and epistemic uncertainties of structural responses for nuclear power plant buildings against fault displacement. A number of nonlinear soil-structure finite element analyses against relatively large fault displacement are performed with the randomness of soil and building material properties, the uncertainly of contact parameters relating to friction between soil and building, and also the uncertainty of fault hazards such as fault types and geometries. Their quantitative results for fragility data are shown in this paper.