SEISMIC SAFETY OF HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT AND SERVICES

Abstract

Hospitals and health care facilities are of the most important facilities that must remain safe and operational after earthquakes. In case of hospitals, safety of equipment and services is also very important for operation of hospital. In the present study, safety of equipment and services in an existing hospital has been studied. For this purpose a detailed survey of the equipment and services in the hospital has been conducted. Different categories of sensitivity and importance of hospital equipment have been identified. A detailed parametric study has been done to identify the parameters affecting the amplifications of motion with the height of the building. It has been observed that the amplification factors increase with the height of the building and these are significantly influenced by the amount plastic deformations in the building. The amplification factors reduce with the increasing plastic deformations. The amplification factors for the given amount of total drift have been observed to be almost same, irrespective of the type of the structural system. The variation of the storey drift along the height of the building has also been studied using Push-over Analysis and Non-Linear Time History analysis. Suitable measures have been proposed and designed for the seismic safety of the equipment ' and services in the existing hospital. For this purpose the equipment and components have been classified into two categories- Acceleration sensitive components and Drift Sensitive Components. Different classes of measures are required for the two categories of the components. Detailed sketches have been provided for the safety measures for the various equipment and services.