Comparison of multiple support excitation solution techniques for piping systems

Abstract

Design and analysis of nuclear power plant piping systems exposed to a variety of dynamic loads often require multiple support excitation analysis by modal or direct time integration methods. Both methods have recently been implemented in the computer program KWUROHR for static and dynamic analysis of piping systems, following the previous implementation of the multiple support excitation response spectrum method (see papers K6/15 and K6/15a of the SMiRT-4 Conference). The results of multiple support excitation response spectrum analyses can be examined by carrying out the equivalent time history analyses which do not distort the time phase relationship between the excitations at different support points. A frequent point of discussion is multiple versus single support excitation. A single support excitation analysis is computationally straightforward and tends to be on the conservative side, as the numerical results show. A multiple support excitation analysis, however, does not incur much more additional computer cost than the expenditure for an initial static solution involving three times the number, L, of excitation levels, i.e. 3 L static load cases. The results are more realistic than those from a single support excitation analysis. A number of typical nuclear plant piping systems have been analyzed using single and multiple support excitation algorithms for: (1) the response spectrum method, (2) the modal time history method via the Wilson, Newmark and Goldberg integration operators and (3) the direct time history method via the Wilson integration operator. Characteristic results are presented to compare the computational quality of all three methods.