Experimental and Analytical Studies of Hospital Piping Assemblies Subjected to Seismic Loading

Post-earthquake functionality of essential facilities, like hospitals, relies heavily on operation of its nonstructural components such as piping systems, fire suppressors, elevators, and medical equipments. This paper presents the findings from experiments performed on welded and threaded hospital piping subassemblies, with and without cable braces, subjected to various intensities of equivalent inter-story drift. The subassemblies were tested between a stationary frame and a biaxial shake table with an input motion compatible with ICC-ES AC156. A simplified computational model was developed in SAP2000 and calibrated with the experimental data. The model was used to investigate the dynamic characteristics of the piping subassemblies. The effective stiffness of the cable bracing system was found from the computational model to be approximately 10% of full stiffness due to initial looseness that typically exists in piping bracings.