• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.967-973
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• 2021

In 2011, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing simultaneous accidents in several reactors. This accident shows us that if there are several reactors on site, the seismic risk to multiple units is important to consider, in addition to that to single units in isolation. When a seismic event occurs, a seismic-failure correlation exists between the nuclear power plant's structures, systems, and components (SSCs) due to their seismic-response and seismic-capacity correlations. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the multi-unit seismic risk by considering the SSCs' seismic-failure-correlation effect. In this study, a methodology is proposed to obtain the seismic-response-correlation coefficient between SSCs to calculate the risk to multi-unit facilities. This coefficient is calculated from a probabilistic multi-unit seismic-response analysis. The seismic-response and seismic-failure-correlation coefficients of the emergency diesel generators installed within the units are successfully derived via the proposed method. In addition, the distribution of the seismic-response-correlation coefficient was observed as a function of the distance between SSCs of various dynamic characteristics. It is demonstrated that the proposed methodology can reasonably derive the seismic-response-correlation coefficient between SSCs, which is the input data for multi-unit seismic probabilistic safety assessment.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.421-427
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• 2017

Seismic safety evaluation of weir structure is significant considering the catastrophic economical consequence of operational disruption. In recent years, the seismic probabilistic risk assessment (SPRA) has been issued as a key area of research for the hydraulic system to mitigate and manage the risk. The aim of this paper is to assess the seismic probabilistic risk of weir structures employing the seismic hazard and the structural fragility in Korea. At the first stage, probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) approach is performed to extract the hazard curve at the weir site using the seismic and geological data. Thereafter, the seismic fragility that defines the probability of structural collapse is evaluated by using the incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) method in accordance with the four different design limit states as failure identification criteria. Consequently, by combining the seismic hazard and fragility results, the seismic risk curves are developed that contain helpful information for risk management of hydraulic structures. The tensile stress of the mass concrete is found to be more vulnerable than other design criteria. The hazard deaggregation illustrates that moderate size and far source earthquakes are the most likely scenario for the site. In addition, the annual loss curves for two different hazard source models corresponding to design limit states are extracted.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.95-101
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• 2016

This study proposes a multi-scale dynamic system reliability analysis of control system as a method of quantitative evaluation of its performance in probabilistic terms. In this second paper, we discuss the control effect of the viscous damper on the seismic performance of the structure-level failure. Since the failure of one structural member does not necessarily cause the collapse of the structural system, we need to consider a set of failure scenarios of the structural system and compute the sum of the failure probabilities of the failure scenarios where the statistical dependence between the failure scenarios should be taken into account. Therefore, this computation requires additional system reliability analysis. As a result, the proposed approach takes a hierarchial framework where the failure probability of a structural member is computed using a lower-scale system reliability with the union set of time-sequential member failures and their statistical dependence, and the failure probability of the structural system is again computed using a higher-scale system reliability with the member failure probabilities obtained by the lower-scale system reliability and their statistical dependence. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach can provide an accurate and stable reliability assessment of the control performance of the viscous damper system on the system failure. Also, the parametric study of damper capacity on the seismic performance has been performed to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach through the probabilistic assessment of the seismic performance improvement of the damper system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.471-482
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• 2012

To assess the risk of nuclear power plant operation and to determine the risk impact of digital systems, there is a need to quantitatively assess the reliability of the digital systems in a justifiable manner. The Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA) is a tool which can reveal shortcomings of the NPP design in general and PRA analysts have not had sufficient guiding principles in modelling particular digital components malfunctions. Currently digital I&C systems are mostly analyzed simply and conventionally in PRA, based on failure mode and effects analysis and fault tree modelling. More dynamic approaches are still in the trial stage and can be difficult to apply in full scale PRA-models. As basic events CPU failures, application software failures and common cause failures (CCF) between identical components are modelled.The primary goal is to model dependencies. However, it is not clear which failure modes or system parts CCF:s should be postulated for. A clear distinction can be made between the treatment of protection and control systems. There is a general consensus that protection systems shall be included in PRA, while control systems can be treated in a limited manner. OECD/NEA CSNI Working Group on Risk Assessment (WGRisk) has set up a task group, called DIGREL, to develop taxonomy of failure modes of digital components for the purposes of PRA. The taxonomy is aimed to be the basis of future modelling and quantification efforts. It will also help to define a structure for data collection and to review PRA studies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.90-96
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• 2016

This study proposes a dynamic reliability analysis of control system as a method of quantitative evaluation of its performance in probabilistic terms. In this dynamic reliability analysis, the failure event is defined as an event that the dynamic response of the structural system exceeds a displacement limit, whereas the conventional reliability analysis method has limitations that do not properly assess the actual time history response of the structure subjected to dynamic loads, such as earthquakes and high winds, by taking the static response into account in the failure event. In this first paper, we discuss the control effect of the viscous damper on the seismic performance of the member-level failure where the failure event of the structural member consists of the union set of time-sequential member failures during the earthquake excitations and the failure probability of the earthquake-excited structural member is computed using system reliability approach to consider the statistical dependence of member failures between the subsequent time points. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach can present a reliable assessment of the control performance of the viscous damper system in comparison with MCS method. The most important advantage of the proposed approach can provide us more accurate estimate of failure probability of the structural control system by using the actual time-history responses obtained by dynamic response analysis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.123-128
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• 2007

In order to apply a static fault-tree (FT) method to a system or a plant whose configuration changes dynamically, condition gates and a post processing method are used to effectively accommodate these changes. An operator's performance change, which can be caused by these configuration changes, should also be considered to assess the risk to a plant in a more realistic manner. This study aims to develop an integrated framework to accommodate various configuration changes and their effect on an operator’s performance by using the FT model. We applied a condition-based human reliability assessment (CBHRA) method to consider various conditions endured by an operator. That is, we integrated the CBHRA method with the conventional post processing method for modeling the system configuration changes. The effect of the condition monitoring systems installed in a plant is also considered. In this study, we show an example application of the integrated framework to a probabilistic safety assessment for the shutdown phase of a nuclear power plant.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.597-604
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• 2006

The seismic safety of the prestressed concrete containment building was evaluated by the seismic fragility analysis based on the nonlinear dynamic time-history analyses. Four kinds of earthquake ground motions were used for the seismic fragility analysis of the containment building to consider the potential earthquake hazard. The conventional seismic fragility analysis of the safety related structures in nuclear pouter plant have been performed by using the linear elastic analysis results for the seismic design. In this study, the displacement based seismic fragility analysis method was proposed.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.320-328
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• 2011

This research proposes comprehensive models for analyzing common cause failures (CCF) due to cumulative shocks and to assess system reliability under the CCF. The proposed cumulative shock models are based on the binomial failure rate (BFR) model. Six kinds of models are proposed so as to explain diverse cumulative shock phenomena. The models are composed of the initial failure probability, shape parameter, and the total shock number. Some parameters of the proposed models can not be explicitly estimated, so we adopt the Expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm in order to obtain the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) for the parameters. By estimating the parameters for the cumulative shock models, the system reliability with CCF can be assessed sequentially according to the number of cumulative shocks. The result can be utilizes in dynamic probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), aging studies, or risk management for nuclear power plants. Replacement or maintenance policies can also be developed based on the proposed model.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.389-398
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• 2018

The seismic isolation system makes a structure isolated from ground motions to protect the structure from seismic events. Seismic isolation techniques have been implemented in full-scale buildings and bridges because of their simplicity, economic effectiveness, inherent stability and reliability. As for the responses of an isolated structure due to seismic events, it is well known that the most uncertain aspects are the seismic loading itself and structural properties. Due to the randomness of earthquakes and uncertainty of structures, seismic response distributions of an isolated structure are needed when evaluating the seismic fragility assessment (or probabilistic seismic safety assessment) of an isolated structure. Seismic response time histories are useful and often essential elements in its design or evaluation stage. Thus, a large number of non-linear dynamic analyses should be performed to evaluate the seismic performance of an isolated structure. However, it is a monumental task to gather the design or evaluation information of the isolated structure from too many seismic analyses, which is impractical. In this paper, a new methodology that can evaluate the seismic fragility assessment of an isolated structure is proposed by using stochastic response database, which is a device that can estimate the seismic response distributions of an isolated structure without any seismic response analyses. The seismic fragility assessment of the isolated nuclear power plant is performed using the proposed methodology. The proposed methodology is able to evaluate the seismic performance of isolated structures effectively and reduce the computational efforts tremendously.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.169-184
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• 2022

The importance of seismicity in developing countries and the strengthening of buildings is a topic of major importance. Therefore, the study of several solutions with the development of new technologies is of great importance to investigate the damage on retrofitted structures by using probabilistic methods. The Federal Emergency Management Agency considers three types of performance levels by considering different scenarios, intensity and duration. The selection and scaling of ground motions mainly depends on the aim of the study. Intensity-based assessments are the most common and compute the response of buildings for a specified seismic intensity. Assessments based on scenarios estimate the response of buildings to different earthquake scenarios. A risk-based assessment is considered as one of the most effective. This research represents a practical method for developing countries where exists many active faults, tall buildings and lack of good implementable approaches. Therefore, to achieve the main goal, two high-rise steel buildings have been modeled and assessed. The contribution of buckling-restrained braces in the elastic design of both buildings is firstly verified. In the nonlinear static range, both buildings presented repairable damage at the central top part and some life safety hinges at the bottom. The nonlinear incremental dynamic analysis was applied by 15 representative/scaled accelerograms to obtain levels of performance and fragility curves. The results shown that by using probabilistic methods, it is possible to estimate the probability of collapse of retrofitted buildings by buckling-restrained braces and tuned mass dampers, which are practical retrofitting options to protect existing structures against earthquakes.