Robert Christopher Corbin
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 180
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This study discusses the experimental research conducted on a typical hospital piping system in a seismic area. The research involved testing full scale piping specimens consisting of commercial grade copper piping type L with soldered connections. The objective of this research was to determine the seismic behavior and capacity characteristics of braced and unbraced copper piping subassemblies by subjecting them to increasing drift excitations using synthetic motions. The braced subassembly was subjected to story drifts up to 3.13% with no apparent damage while the unbraced subassembly failed at 2.6%. A comparison was also made between the results of the copper/soldered piping and those of the experiments that considered steel/welded and steel/threaded piping. The results showed that the steel/welded and copper/soldered pipes failed at higher intensities of drift while the seismic bracing was effective in controlling the displacement responses of all the systems.
