Numerical investigations of a base isolation system for nuclear power plants: Safety domain definition and analytical model identification

Innovative approaches to the seismic protection of nuclear power plants (NPP) foresee the building base isolation as a reliable solution. A numerical procedure for the evaluation of NPP seismic fragility has been studied and an extension toward the seismic isolated reactor building is presented herein. The IRIS (International Reactor Innovative and Secure) reactor building is the case study for performing the numerical procedure aimed both to the evaluation of the isolators limit state, by numerical analysis and laboratory tests, and the identification of an analytical model, reported in literature, for computing the seismic fragility of the isolated NPP. © Civil-Comp Press, 2011