Generation of Floor Response Spectra Considering Coupling Effect of Primary and Secondary System

Seismic qualification of equipment including piping is performed by using floor response spectra (FRS) or in-structure response spectra (ISRS) as the earthquake input at the base of the equipment. The amplitude of the FRS may be noticeably reduced when obtained from coupling analysis because of interaction between the primary structure and the equipment. This paper introduces a method using a modal synthesis approach to generate the FRS in a coupled primary-secondary system that can avoid numerical instabilities or inaccuracies. The FRS were generated by considering the dynamic interaction that can occur at the interface between the supporting structure and the equipment. This study performed a numerical example analysis using a typical nuclear structure to investigate the coupling effect when generating the FRS. The study results show that the coupling analysis dominantly reduces the FRS and yields rational results. The modal synthesis approach is very practical to implement because it requires information on only a small number of dynamic characteristics of the primary and the secondary systems such as frequencies, modal participation factors, and mode shape ordinates at the locations where the FRS needs to be generated.