Evaluation of Seismic Designed Pipe Racks under Accidental Explosions with Finite Element Method

The safety of pipe racks in petrochemical sites or refineries needs to be considered to ensure a sustainable productivity and explosions would make these structures vulnerable. Non-building structures field have remained relatively intact in comparison with ordinary buildings for which state-of-the-art guidelines are regularly proposed and existing ones are renewed. To have comprehensive knowledge on non-building structures response to blast load, multiple factors are involved. This paper pinpoints how these variables affect the pipe racks and for this purpose, ABAQUS software undertakes the solving process as multi-degree of freedom (MDOF) and Finite Element method are required. Despite ordinary buildings, pipe racks are accompanied by non-structural components whose effects in design are evaluated not significant. Moreover, adequacy and accuracy of usual analysis including static and non-linear dynamic analysis are investigated. According to the calculations, static analysis is highly sensitive to irregularities and blast duration, therefore, it may lead to invalid results. Finally, a consequence analysis is suggested to be a contribution to engineers for outlining a well-arranged layout for different sectors.