C15 Thinned wall piping 3-D shaking table test and a consideration on seismic margin

Abstract

Tri-axial shake table tests on the piping system with wall thinning were conducted to obtain the effect of wall thinning on vibration characteristics and failure modes of piping system. The excitation test reached the fatigue failure of the elbow applied in the piping system but the failure could not cause under the excitation level beyond the limit of the piping design criteria. The test results suggest that the seismic design criterion for piping system has too much margin.