Study on the Effective Stiffness of Base Isolation System for Reducing Acceleration and Displacement Responses

To limit both the large displacement and acceleration response of the structure efficiently, the relationships between acceleration and displacement responses of the structure under several earthquakes are investigated for various horizontal stiffness of the base isolation system to determine the effective stiffness of the base isolation system in this paper. An example structure is a five-storey steel frame building as the primary structure and the secondary structures are assumed to be located on the fifth floor of the primary structure. Input motions used in the structural analysis are El Centre 1940, Taft 1952, Mexico 1985, San Fernando 1971 Pacoima Dam, and artificially generated earthquakes. The relationships of the absolute peak acceleration and the displacement at the top of the structure are calculated for various natural periods of base isolators under various earthquakes. The peak acceleration response of the fifth floor in the base isolated structure is significantly reduced by a factor of 2.1 through 6.25. Also, the relative displacement response of the floor to the base of the superstructure is very small. The results of this study can be utilized to determine the effective stiffness of the base isolation system.