While the national building codes do a good job of defining the seismic forces that mechanical systems must withstand, guidance in transferring these “ global” loads into working forces that must be resisted at the restraint points is not well documented. The broad range of equipment and restraint types and structural interfaces makes these kinds of computations more complex. This paper is intended to offer insights into how different kinds of equipment behave as well as to suggest possible ways of computing the attachment forces that result from a given input load.

Units: Dual