The cost of damage to the non-structural systems in critical facilities like nuclear power plants and hospitals can exceed 80% of the total cost of damage during an earthquake. Studies assessing damage from the 1974 San Fernando and 1994 Northridge earthquakes reported a widespread failure of non-structural components like sprinkler piping systems (Ayer and Phillips, 1998). The failure of piping systems led to leakage of water and subsequent shut-down of hospitals immediately after the event. Consequently, probabilistic seismic fragility studies for these types of structural configurations have become necessary to mitigate the risk and to achieve reliable designs. This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate seismic fragility of threaded T-joint connections found in typical hospital floor piping systems. Numerous experiments on threaded T-joints of various sizes subjected to monotonic and cyclic loading conducted at University of Buffalo indicate that the “First Leak” damage state is observed predominantly due to excessive flexural deformations at the T-joint section. The results of the monotonic and cyclic loading tests help us evaluate the following characteristics for a given pipe size and material: (i) Maximum allowable value of rotational deformation at the T-joint section to prevent “First Leak” damage state; (ii) The force-displacement and moment-rotation relationships at the T-joint section. A non-linear finite element model for the T-joint system is formulated and validated with the experimental results. It is shown that the T-joint section can be satisfactorily modeled using non-linear rotational springs. The system-level fragility of the complete piping system corresponding to the “First Leak” damage state is determined from multiple time-history analyses using a Monte-Carlo simulation accounting for uncertainties in demand.

As part of the Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program, the objective of the Grizzly/FAVOR Interface project is to create the capability to apply Grizzly 3-D finite element (thermal and stress) analysis results as input to FAVOR probabilistic fracture mechanics (PFM) analyses. The one benefit of FAVOR to Grizzly is the PROBABILISTIC capability. This document describes the implementation of the Grizzly/FAVOR Interface, the preliminary verification and tests results and a user guide that provides detailed step-by-step instructions to run the program.

This document discusses various issues in implementing a robust access control schema to secure the Reactor Embrittlement Archive Project (REAP) web application. REAP application has been designed to allow different types of users. Consequently, it is vital to ensure that REAP website has a robust security framework in order to prevent intrusion, to protect data and resources from misuse, and protect data from malicious or unintentional modification by users. Various possible alternatives for authentication frameworks in ASP.NET-Windows, Forms, Passport and custom (JOSSO) authentication frameworks are evaluated. It is concluded that Windows Authentication is apt for REAP. Various elements of implementation are discussed with examples.