• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.75-84
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• 2010

An in-cabinet response spectrum should be generated to perform the seismic qualification of devices and instruments mounted inside safety-related electrical equipment installed in nuclear power plants. The response spectrum is available by obtaining accurate seismic responses at the device mounting location of the cabinet. The dynamic behavior of most of electrical equipment may not be easily analyzed due to their complex mass and stiffness distributions. Considering these facts, this study proposes a procedure to estimate the seismic responses of a structure by a combination of a test and subsequent analysis. This technique firstly constructs the modal equations of the structure by using the experiment modal parameters obtained from the impact test. Then the seismic responses of the structure may be calculated by a mode superposition method. A simple steel frame structure was fabricated as a specimen for the validation of the proposed method. The seismic responses of the specimen were estimated by using the proposed technique and compared with the measurements obtained from the shaking table tests. The study results show that it is possible to accurately estimate the seismic response of the structure by using the experimental modal parameters obtained from the impact test.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.53-61
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• 2019

The seismic capacity of electric cabinets in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) should be qualified before installation and be maintained during operation. However it can happen that identical devices cannnot be produced for replacement of devices mounted in electric cabinets. In case of when no In-Cabinet Response Spectrum (ICRS) is available for new devices, ICRS can be generated by using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). In this study we investigate structural response and ICRSs of battery charger which is supplied to NPPs. Test results on the battery charger are utilized in this study. The response is measured by accelerometers installed on the housing of the battery charger and local panels in the battery charger. Numerical analysis model is established based on resonant frequency search test results and validated by comparison with 2 types of earthquake testing results. ICRSs produced from the numerical model are compared with measured ICRSs in the seismic tests. Developed analysis model is a simple reduced model and anticipates ICRSs quite well as measured response in the tests overall despite of its structural limitation.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.1 s.41
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• pp.1-7
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• 2005

The optimal seismic retrofitting of NPP(Nuclear Power Plant) cabinet structures that contain seismic category 1 relays was studied in this paper. During earthquake event, the failure modes of relays are not appeared in form of structural failure, but are appeared in form of contact chatter of relay. Therefore, the retrofitting of cabinet has to be aimed at the reducing of the structural response, such as acceleration. In this study, the optimal characteristic values of dampers were searched by ${\mu}$-GA (micro-Genetic Algorithm) scheme for several installation patterns. To keep accuracy and efficiency of analysis, the structural models of cabinet were considered as a frame structure. The responses of structure were obtained inform of acceleration response spectra derived from the results of nonlinear time history analysis including damping nonlinearity. The objective function of the optimum procedure was constructed based on the maximum ratio of maximum spectral value and target GERS (General Equipment Ruggedness Spectra). The results show the good improvements of fitness for adequate retrofitting pattern. Especially, the improvements of fitness were remarkable when the values of damping exponents are low.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.95-102
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• 2020

Electrical instruments and devices contained in cabinets for controlling nuclear power plants require seismic qualification; likewise, in-cabinet response spectrum (ICRS) is necessary. Gupta et al. (1999) suggested the Ritz method, where rocking, frame bending, and plate bending behaviors of cabinets are considered, as a method for determining ICRS. This research proposes a method to determine the rocking stiffness of cabinets, which represents its rocking behavior. The cabinet is fixed on mounting frames and is connected to the base concrete by anchors. When horizontal excitation is applied to the cabinet, the mounting frames at anchors are locally deformed, the mounting frames are bent, and then rocking in the cabinet becomes evident. A method to determine equivalent vertical spring stiffness representing the local deformation of the mounting frames at anchors is then proposed. Subsequently, the rocking stiffness of this mounting frame is calculated upon assumption of the mounting frame as an indeterminate beam.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.103-110
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• 2020

Seismic qualification of instruments and devices mounted on electrical cabinets in a nuclear power plant is performed in this study by means of the in-cabinet response spectrum (ICRS). A simple method and two rigorous methods are proposed in the EPRI NP-7146-SL guidelines for generating the ICRS. The simple method of EPRI can give unrealistic spectra that are excessively conservative in many cases. In the past, the time domain analysis (TDA) methods have been mostly used to analyze a structure. However, the TDA requires the generation of an artificial earthquake input motion compatible to the target response spectrum. The process of generating an artificial earthquake may involve a great deal of uncertainty. In addition, many time history analyses should be performed to increase the accuracy of the results. This study developed a numerical analysis program for generating the ICRS by frequency domain analysis (FDA) method. The developed program was validated by the numerical study. The ICRS calculated by FDA thoroughly matched with those obtained from TDA. This study then confirms that the method it proposes can simply and efficiently generate the ICRS compared to the time domain method.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.279-288
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• 2019

Safety-related cabinets and their electrical parts, such as relays and switches in nuclear power plants, should maintain continuous functioning, as well as structural safety according to the nuclear regulatory guidelines. Generally, an electrical part is qualified if its functioning is maintained without abnormality during excitement by motion compatible with the test response spectrum, which is larger than its in-cabinet response spectrum (ICRS). ICRS can be determined by shake-table test or dynamic analysis. Since existing cabinets in use can hardly be stopped and moved, dynamic analysis is preferred over shake-table test in determining ICRS. The simple method, suggested by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to determine ICRS, yields conservative or non-conservative results from time to time. In order to determine that the ICRS is better than EPRI method in a simple way, Ritz method considering global and local plate behaviors was suggested by Gupta et al. In this paper, the Ritz method is modified in order to consider the rocking and frame behaviors simultaneously, and it is applied to a simple numerical example for verification. ICRS is determined by Ritz method and compared with the results by finite element method (FEM). Based on this numerical example, recommendations for using Ritz method are suggested.