Abstract
The nuclear accident due to the recent earthquake in Japan has triggered awareness of the importance of safety with regard to nuclear power plants (NPPs). An earthquake is one of the most important parameters which governs the safety of NPPs among external events. Application of a base isolation system for NPPs can reduce the risk for earthquakes. At present, a soil-structure interaction (SSI) analysis is essential in the seismic design of NPPs in consideration of the ground structure interaction. In the seismic analysis of the base-isolated NPP, it is restrictive to consider the nonlinear properties of seismic isolation devices due to the linear analysis of the SSI analysis programs, such as SASSI. Thus, in this study, SSI analyses are performed using an iterative approach considering the material nonlinearity of the isolators. By performing the SSI analysis using an iterative approach, the nonlinear properties of isolators can be considered. The difference between the SSI analysis results without iteration and SSI with iteration using SASSI is noticeable. The results of the SSI analysis using an effective linear (non-iterative) approach underestimate the spectral acceleration because the effective linear model cannot consider the nonlinear properties of isolators. The results of the SSI analysis show that the horizontal response of the base-isolated NPP is significantly reduced.
