Basic Study on Seismic Response Analysis and Optimal Design of Piping System Supported by Elasto-Plastic Damper Based on Probabilistic and Statistical Theory

©2013 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers In this paper, we propose the seismic response analysis method and investigate the optimal design of the piping system supported by elasto-plastic damper subjected to the random input based on the random vibration theory. The piping system is modeled by simple cantilever beam with weight. The support force is given by bilinear model. The inputs are given by white Gaussian noises. In this optimal design, we can maintain the structural integrities of both the piping systems and the elasto-plastic supporting devices by taking three indexes; dynamic reliability of pipings, accumulated energy of support and dynamic reliability of support into account. Furthermore, the optimal conditions of parameters such as the supporting location, the capacity of the supporting devices are searched. Numerical simulations are performed using a simple piping system model for the random input based on the probabilistic vibration theory. The optimal design proposed here is applicable to the seismic design of piping systems supported by elasto-plastic dampers subjected to the actual earthquake input.