Pipe/duct system design for tornado missile impact loads

For nuclear power plant life extension projects, it may be convenient and in some instances necessary to locate safety-related steel ducts and pipes outside of the main structures, exposing them to extreme environmental loads such as tornado missile impact. Examples of this application include emergency firewater lines and Control Room vent ducts. A typical exposed commodity run could be comprised of a rectangular or circular cross-section with horizontal and vertical segments supported at variable spans off of roof and wall panels, respectively. Efficient and economical design of such a tornado-impacted duct or pipe system, consisting of the commodity and its supports, must exploit all of the systemʹs capability to absorb the impact energy by deforming plastically to the fullest extent allowable. Energy can be absorbed locally in the vicinity of impact on the commodity, globally through rotation at flexural plastic hinges, and through yielding of the supports. In this paper a simplified NDOF lumped parameter nonlinear analysis methodology is presented and applied to the coupled commodity/support system subjected to tornado impulse loading. The analysis methodology is confirmed using a detailed ANSYS nonlinear finite element model. Optimization of the initial trial design is achieved by progressively decreasing the support resistances, while monitoring the response ductilities throughout the system. Evaluation methodologies are provided for the four types of plastic deformation responses which occur in the system: local response in the immediate vicinity of impact, flexural and membrane response of the sidewall out to one or two times the commodity depth beyond the point of impact, global response of the commodity as a beam spanning between supports, and the shear and flexural response of support. The inelastic responses are evaluated against AISC N690 acceptance criteria (ANSI, 2006), supplemented as appropriate by triaxiality considerations for inelastic strain in the pipe material.