Investigation of Seismic Response for a Quarter Scale Reactor Containment Model

Abstract

The effect of soil-structure interaction is an ongoing subject of experimental and numerical studies, since the seismic responses of structures play an important role in design of nuclear power plants. As a result, a quarter scale model of a pressurized-water reactor building was constructed by an international research consortium Hualien, Taiwan. This region of Taiwan is a seismically active area. In this study, the seismic responses due to an earthquake of magnitude 5.6 which occurred on January 20, 1994 have been used for comparison with numerical results. The sub-structure method and the hybrid method are adopted to analyze the structural responses, and we investigate the differences between numerical results of the two methods in detail.