Fragility of Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing Equipment

Abstract

A study for the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) provides fragility functions for 52 varieties of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) equipment commonly found in commercial and industrial buildings. For the majority of equipment categories, the MCEER study provides multiple fragility functions, reflecting important effects of bracing, anchorage, interaction, etc. The fragility functions express the probability that the component would be rendered inoperative as a function of floor acceleration. That work did not include the evidence underlying the fragility functions. As part of the ATC-58 effort to bring second-generation performance-based earthquake engineering to professional practice, we have compiled the original MCEER specimen-level performance data into a publicly accessible database and validate many of the original fragility functions. In some cases, new fragility functions derived by ATC-58 methods show somewhat closer agreement with the raw data. Average-condition fragility functions are developed here; we will address in subsequent work the effect of potentially important—arguably crucial—performance-modifying factors such as poor anchorage and interaction.

Performance assessment of tall concrete core‐wall building designed using two alternative approaches

“…As part of the study it was desirable to assess expected repair costs from future earthquakes. Previous research has produced data, models, and analytical tools for this purpose (e.g., ). In this study, we adopted the procedure of Yang et al to carry out the computations for expected damage and repair costs.…”

“…Initially, engineers adopted ad hoc procedures for performance‐based seismic design of tall buildings. Later, documents including SEAONC , LATBSDC , and the Tall Buildings Initiative (TBI) formalized these procedures. The earliest of these guidelines essentially adopted the building code procedures, including strength and drift checks for the Design Earthquake , but permitted some building code exceptions if adequate performance was demonstrated by nonlinear dynamic analysis.…”

“…For a tall building stakeholder, however, performance may be better represented in terms of initial cost and the cost to repair damage from postulated future earthquakes. Advances in defining useful performance metrics, data, models, and analytical tools (e.g., ) have enabled practical assessment of expected future repair costs. Application of such methods to tall buildings designed by alternative methods can provide insight into the performance potential of tall buildings in general, and the effectiveness of the alternative design approaches.…”

Study on Seismic Performance of a Mold Transformer through Shaking Table Tests

“…2020, 10, 361 9 of 20 transfer function method in the frequency domain. The transfer function amplitude was determined as the ratio between the Fourier transformation of the input signals, and the response output signals collected from accelerometer data installed on the several points of the mold transformer [7,8,11,18]. The sampling frequency of the accelerometer in this study was equal to 512 Hz, and the size of each data block (window) was set to 5120, corresponding to 10 s. The transfer function amplitude has local peaks at the natural frequency of the system [18].…”

“…Nonetheless, the studies on electrical and mechanical components, such as switchboards or transformers commonly used in structural buildings for power systems, are still limited [9][10][11][12][13]. Wang et al [9] performed a series of quasi-static cyclic loading and shaking table tests to investigate the behavior of a prototype diesel generator equipped with a restrained vibration isolation system.…”