Investigation of the Seismic Risk of Industrial Pipe Rack - Piping Systems Accounting for Soil-Structure Interaction

Earthquake events have shown that industrial pipe racks lack of a completed design framework that encompasses contemporarily a number of uncertainties such as modelling, seismic action, design and analysis procedures as well as soil conditions. That being said, the seismic behaviour of piping systems has not been assessed up to par recognizing the potential effects of nonbuilding – nonstructural components interaction as well as soil conditions that constitute a decisive parameter particularly for structures that lie on alluvial deposits. In the present work, after reviewing European and American standards and technical literature upon design parameters, the seismic reliability analysis of two pipe rack – piping systems in decoupled and coupled case considering near- and far-field records as well as soil deformability is addressed. As it is illustrated, the classic nonlinear static analysis may overestimate the resistance of racks, common limit states of interstorey drift ratio cannot be applied and the behaviour factor selection may be unjustifiable. Also, soil-structure interaction affects detrimentally the response both of rack and piping system as depicted by the fragility functions.