Seismic stability of interconnected glove boxes

•Glove boxes (GBs) are used to process hazardous materials in a nuclear facility.•Shake table testing has been carried out to evaluate the seismic performance of interconnected GBs.•Rigid body motions dominated seismic response with very limited elastic deformations.•Finite element analysis of 3D model of the structure has been carried out.•Simplified numerical method is proposed, to quickly estimate sliding displacement and determine upper bounds for it.