Development of an Earthquake Capacity Evaluation Technique for Functional Recoverable Hospital Suspended Non-Structural Elements (2/3)

This research proposal targets 2 most vulnerable nonstructural elements in hospitals from various earthquake reconnaissance reports: suspended ceiling and sprinkler pipes. Their damage easily lead to the closure of hospitals post an earthquake event. This proposal is jointly conducted with Dr. Duo Zhi Wang of IEM in Beijing. Dr. Wang is a Master thesis advisor and conducted various nonstructural elements research work.Sprinkler pipes are vulnerable owing to their long suspension which leads to large swing motion in earthquakes and are easily cracked due to impact with neighboring elements or due to large relative displacement wrt fixed pipes. Cracked sprinkler pipes ruins the sanitary requirement and cause flooding in the hospitals. Although NFPA 13 has prescriptive requirement for bracing systems on sprinkler piping but there is a lack of justification in scientific study on the relationship of bracing rods/wires with pipe displacement. This research intends to study the relationship of them and propose a suggested clearance gap for frame-type hangers with different earthquake bracing. Suspended ceilings are vulnerable in earthquakes if not constructed by the ASTM E580 requirements. However, recent international joint research indicated that the bracing assembly may be vulnerable to the ceiling if a ASTM E580 system is excited by large vertical acceleration. The applicant PIed several research projects on this issue and verified this view point, however there is a lack of large scale testing’s to justify the proposed ceiling systems. Through this research proposal, the applicant will develop an earthquake-resistant ceiling system and justify the rational by experiments and numerical analysis. This research work intends to carry out experiments in the test lab run by his department which has 2 special testing frames for suspended building elements and the large shaking table run by the NCREE in Tainan. In these labs component, elements, and large-scale testing will be conducted and results compared to numerical analysis.