Seismic Performance of Raised Floor System by Shake Table Excitations

Seismic performance of nonstructural elements such as the raised floor system has not attracted much attention. However, damage of expensive equipments that stand in the raised floor system of high-tech FAB was often observed during past earthquake in Taiwan area. This will result in huge loss of manufacturing functions and properties for the high-tech industry. There is a need to understand the dynamic characteristics of the raised floor system for future seismic protection. This paper presents the seismic performance of raised floor system by shake table excitations. The tested raised floor system was a pedestal-stringer frame structure, and supporting a simulated equipment. This raised floor system was the typical system that frequently used in Taiwan semi-conductor FAB. The input motions for the shake table tests were the waffle-slab floor acceleration responses of a typical semi-conductor FAB by input simulated ground motions. The simulated ground motions are base on the phase spectrum and the maximum potential earthquake of site located at Taiwan Hsin-Chu Science Park. The dynamic characteristics include the acceleration amplification and dependence of input motions by raised floor system was studied and discussed. This study also employee the finite element package to carry out numerical simulation on seismic responses of raised floor systems and compared with the experimental data, and show that the proposed simulation model was very excellent.