3-D Base Control Systems for the Seismic Protection of Power Plant Equipment and Buildings

Safety in nuclear facilities is of special importance and recent seismic events and the resulting damage in these facilities again bring up the discussion. One of the latest events is the 2007 Chuetsu earthquake in Japan. The arising damage in the Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant can be found in several reports like (Fukushima, 2007) and (Yamashita, 2008).Base-Control Systems (BCS) consist of Spring-damper combinations with specifically designed stiffness and damping properties which can be described in the vertical and both horizontal directions. Nowadays these 3 dimensional supports are frequently used to reduce seismic acceleration levels of machine components, equipment and buildings as safety or non-safety related structures. They may also be applied to protect sensitive equipment or machinery against other catastrophic events, i.e. airplane impact which is of particular importance in nuclear facilities.By presenting specific executed examples, this article shall also underline the efficiency of the BCS which, in contrary to purely horizontally efficient Base-isolation Systems with rubber (BIS), is not extensively discussed in literature. Decisive characteristics of the shown applications are provided and the benefits of using this technology for machine or equipment manufacturers, designers or owners are explained.Copyright © 2013 by ASME