Seismic response analysis of a nuclear reactor structure considering nonlinear soil-structure interaction

This study focuses on the seismic response analysis of an internal shearwall of a typical Indian reactor resting on a medium dense sandy silty soil, incorporating the nonlinear behavior of the soil-foundation interface. The modeling is done in an open-source finite element framework, OpenSees, where the soil-structure interaction (SSI) is modeled using a Beam-on-Nonlinear-Winkler-Foundation (BNWF) approach. Static pushover analysis and cyclic analysis are performed followed by an incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) with 30 recorded ground motions. For performing IDA, the spectral acceleration of each motion corresponding to the fundamental period, Sa(T1)is incremented from 0.1 g to 1.0 g with an increment step of 0.1 g. It is observed from the cyclic analysis that the equivalent viscous damping of the system increases upto twice upon incorporation of inelastic SSI. The IDA results demonstrate that the average peak base shear, base moment and displacement ductility demand reduces as much as 62%, 40%, and 35%, respectively, whereas the roof drift demand increases up to 25% upon consideration of foundation nonlinearity for the highest intensity motion. These observations indicate the need of critical consideration of nonlinear soil-structure interaction as any deficient modeling of the same may lead to an inaccurate estimation of the seismic demands of the structure.