Earthquake Analysis of Pipe Supports in Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract: This is the resulting report from a master thesis project in the eld of structuralanalysis, with a focus on earthquake engineering.
In this project are pipe supports impacts on seismic pipe design analysed. This is done by modelling a building, pipe supports and a pipe system in two dierent computer softwares. Pipestress is commonly used for design of pipes at nuclear plants, and Abaqus has applications in many elds of mechanics.
Earthquake data for seismic design at nuclear plants in Sweden is used as input and dierent kinds of analysis are performed. Output from the two soft-wares is compared to see how the responses dier and if it is related to the pipe supports.
The support eigenmodes and forces calculated, dier between the two soft-wares. The dierence in eigenmodes and therefore also the forces may be explained by modelling issues concerning the pipe bends. However, the modelling
technique for the pipe supports does not seem to impact the result.