Seismic behavior of RC structures with absence of floor slab constraints and large mass turbine as a non-conventional TMD: a case study

This paper presents a case study on the influence of absence of floor slab constraints and large mass turbine as a non-conventional tuned mass damper (TMD) on the seismic behavior of the structure and members. The investigated structural system is a reinforced concrete (RC) shear wall-frame power plant structure with large slab openings and a large mass turbine. In RC structures, the existence of floor slabs can usually provide strong constraints on beams so as to greatly increase their bearing capacity. However, due to some special functional demands, large area of slabs may have to be removed so that some floor beams will lose the constraints provided by slabs. In such cases, beams could be subjected to complex internal forces and develop unexpected failure modes under earthquake actions. Nonlinear time history analyses are conducted by using the self-developed program COMPONA-MARC Version 1.0. The numerical model employs fiber beam-column elements with distributed plasticity approach which can elaborately simulate the complex seismic behavior of structural members without slab constraints including the significant transverse vibration damage mechanism. For the seismic effectiveness of the turbine as a TMD with large mass ratio, the optimized parameters are discussed and verified by extensive numerical examples under a wide selection of ground acceleration time histories. The acceleration responses of the turbine are analyzed and found to satisfy the corresponding requirements. The dynamic interaction between the structure and turbine is evaluated and the effects of mass ratio and multiple supporting springs on the dynamic response of the turbine are investigated. It is found that the acceleration response of the turbine modeled with multiple supporting springs is evidently larger than that modeled with a single degree-of-freedom system, and the floor response spectrum decreases significantly with the increase of the mass ratio.