Optimal probability‐based partial mass isolation of elevated coal scuttle in thermal power plant building

Partial mass isolation (PMI) system is a practical strategy to mitigate seismic response of the main structure. Many studies provide various formulas to estimate an optimum design solution for the structure under simplified excitation models. But the efficiency of these optimization methods under actual ground motion records requires investigation. This paper proposes a new optimization design framework, which considers the randomness of ground motions. To describe the vibration depression effects of the PMI under various records, several theoretical distributions were assumed and tested. A Weibull distribution was selected because of its best performance in the chi‐squared tests among the several theoretical distributions. A sensitivity study on the number of records was performed to ensure the accuracy of estimated parameters with a relatively small sample size. This framework was adopted in the design of a PMI system for a large‐scale thermal power plant building through both single‐objective and multiobjective optimization procedures. Optimal design results from the single‐objective optimization procedure were compared with those from traditional formulas. Additionally, with the relative displacement limitation, the Pareto optimum set was obtained from the multiobjective optimization procedure. The final design was compared with the single‐objective optimization result.