International Journal of Engineering and Technology

This paper presents the seismic fragility of piping systems based on monotonic experimental tests. The fragility, conditional probability of failure for a given level of intensity measure, generally used to evaluate the structural safety and indentify the fault tree with respect to seismically induced failures. The nonlinear FE models of threaded T-joint systems based on monotonic experimental results were developed in OpenSees, using the ElasticPPGap material. In order to evaluate the seismic fragility of T-joint piping systems, 1-inch and 2-inch threaded T-joint systems, were incorporated with main hospital piping system, and multiple nonlinear time history analyses related to Monte Carlo simulation were conducted. Consequently, seismic fragility of piping system at 1-inch and 2-inch threaded T-joint connections corresponding to ductility level was developed. It was interesting to observe that 2-inch threaded T-joint was more fragile rather than 1-inch threaded T-joint, based on the nonlinear FE model by monotonic tests and also location 1 was more fragile rather than location 2 for both 1-inch and 2-inch T-joint.