• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.261-272
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• 2020

Recent severe earthquakes in and around the vital public places worldwide indicate the severe vulnerability of ground excitation to be assailed. Reducing the effect of seismic lateral load in structural design is an important conception. Essentially, seismic isolation is required to shield the superstructure in such a way that the building superstructure would not move when the ground is shaking. This study explores the effectiveness, design, and practical feasibility of base isolation systems to reduce seismic demands on buildings of varying elevations. Thus, static and dynamic analyses were conducted based on site-specific bi-directional earthquakes for base-isolated as well as fixed-based buildings. Remarkably, it was discovered that isolators used in low-rise to high-rise structures tend to significantly decrease the structural responses of seismic prone buildings. The higher allowable horizontal displacement induces structural flexibility and ensure good structural health of the building stories. Reinforcement from vertical and horizontal members can be reduced in significant amounts for BI buildings. Thus, although incorporating base isolators increases the initial outlay, it considerably diminishes the total structural cost.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.1237-1251
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• 2016

Although the horizontal component of an earthquake response can be significantly reduced through the use of conventional seismic isolators, the vertical component of excitation is still transmitted directly into the structure. Records from instrumented structures, and some recent tests and analyses have actually seen increases in vertical responses in base isolated structures under the combined effects of horizontal and vertical ground motions. This issue becomes a great concern to facilities such as a Nuclear Power Plants (NPP), with specialized equipment and machinery that is not only expensive, but critical to safe operation. As such, there is considerable interest worldwide in vertical and three-dimensional (3D) isolation systems. This paper examines several vertical and 3D isolation systems that have been proposed and their potential application to modern nuclear facilities. In particular, a series of case study analyses of a modern NPP model are performed to examine the benefits and challenges associated with 3D isolation compared with horizontal isolation. It was found that compared with the general horizontal isolators, isolators that have vertical frequencies of no more than 3 Hz can effectively reduce the vertical in-structure responses for the studied NPP model. Among the studied cases, the case that has a vertical isolation frequency of 3 Hz is the one that can keep the horizontal period of the isolators as the first period while having the most flexible vertical isolator properties. When the vertical frequency of isolators reduces to 1 Hz, the rocking effect is obvious and rocking restraining devices are necessary.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.1101-1121
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• 2016

Base isolation, one of the popular seismic protection approaches proven to be effective in practical applications, has been widely applied worldwide during the past few decades. As the techniques mature, it has been recognised that, the biggest issue faced in base isolation technique is the challenge of great base displacement demand, which leads to the potential of overturning of the structure, instability and permanent damage of the isolators. Meanwhile, drain, ventilation and regular maintenance at the base isolation level are quite difficult and rather time- and fund- consuming, especially in the highly populated areas. To address these challenges, a number of efforts have been dedicated to propose new isolation systems, including segmental building, additional storey isolation (ASI) and mid-storey isolation system, etc. However, such techniques have their own flaws, among which whipping effect is the most obvious one. Moreover, due to their inherent passive nature, all these techniques, including traditional base isolation system, show incapability to cope with the unpredictable and diverse nature of earthquakes. The solution for the aforementioned challenge is to develop an innovative vibration isolation system to realise variable structural stiffness to maximise the adaptability and controllability of the system. Recently, advances on the development of an adaptive magneto-rheological elastomer (MRE) vibration isolator has enlightened the development of adaptive base isolation systems due to its ability to alter stiffness by changing applied electrical current. In this study, an innovative semi-active storey isolation system inserting such novel MRE isolators between each floor is proposed. The stiffness of each level in the proposed isolation system can thus be changed according to characteristics of the MRE isolators. Non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm type II (NSGA-II) with dynamic crowding distance (DCD) is utilised for the optimisation of the parameters at isolation level in the system. Extensive comparative simulation studies have been conducted using 5-storey benchmark model to evaluate the performance of the proposed isolation system under different earthquake excitations. Simulation results compare the seismic responses of bare building, building with passive controlled MRE base isolation system, building with passive-controlled MRE storey isolation system and building with optimised storey isolation system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.586-594
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• 1999

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.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.217-235
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• 2023

Orthogonal pairs of rollers on concave beds (OPRCB) are a low-cost, low-tech rolling-based isolating system, whose high efficiency has been shown in a previous study. However, seismic performance of OPRCB isolators has only been studied in the two-dimensional (2D) state so far. This is while their performance in the three-dimensional (3D) state differs from that of the 2D state, mainly since the vertical accelerations due to rollers' motion in their beds, simultaneously in two orthogonal horizontal directions, are added up and resulting in bigger vertical inertia forces and higher rolling resistance. In this study, first, Lagrange equations were used to derive the governing equations of motion of the OPRCB-isolated buildings in 3D. Then, some regular shear-type OPRCB-isolated buildings were considered subjected to three-component excitations of far- and near-source earthquakes, and their responses were compared to those of their fixed-base counterparts. Finally, the effects of more realistic modeling and analysis were examined by comparing the responses of isolated buildings in 2D and 3D states. Response histories were obtained by the fourth-order Runge-Kutta-Nystrom method, considering the geometrical nonlinearity of isolators. Results reveal that utilizing the OPRCB isolators effectively reduces the acceleration response, however, depending on the system specifications and earthquake characteristics, the maximum responses of isolated buildings in the 3D state can be up to 40% higher than those in the 2D state.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.847-862
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• 2015

Typical base isolated buildings are designed so that the superstructure remains elastic in design-level earthquakes, though the isolation layer is often quite nonlinear using, e.g., hysteretic elements such as lead-rubber bearings and friction pendulum bearings. Similarly, other well-performing structural control systems keep the structure within the linear range except during the most extreme of excitations. Design optimization of these isolators or other structural control systems requires computationally-expensive response simulations of the (mostly or fully) linear structural system with the nonlinear structural control devices. Standard nonlinear structural analysis algorithms ignore the localized nature of these nonlinearities when computing responses. This paper proposes an approach for the computationally-efficient optimal design of passive isolators by extending a methodology previously developed by the authors for accelerating the response calculation of mostly linear systems with local features (linear or nonlinear, deterministic or random). The methodology is explained and applied to a numerical example of a base isolated building with a hysteretic isolation layer. The computational efficiency of the proposed approach is shown to be significant for this simple problem, and is expected to be even more dramatic for more complex systems.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.51-60
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• 1998

Base isolation is an innovative design strategy that provides a practical alternative for the seismic design of structures. Base isolators, mainly employed to isolate large structures subjected to earthquake ground excitations and to rehabilitate structures damaged by past earthquakes, deflect and absorb the seismic energy horizontally transmitted to the structures. This study demonstrated that the base isolation system may offer effective performance for bridges during severe seismic events through shaking table tests. Two base isolation systems using laminated rubber bearings with and without hydraulic dampers are tested. The test results strongly show that the laminate rubber bearings cause the natural period of the bridge structure increased considerably, which results in the deck acceleration and the shear forces on the deck acceleratino and the shear forces on the piers reduced significantly. The results also demonstrate that the hydraulic dampers enhance the system's capacity in dissipating energy to reduce the relative displacement between the bridge deck and the pier.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.391-398
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• 2000

To evaluate the seismic performance of a base isolated building accurate analytical model should be selected. The analytical results such as reduced accelerations member forces and relative displacements of the superstructure of the base isolated building are only meaningful when the analytical model is close enough to the real structure. Real size one bay-two story steel frame and two kinds of seismic isolators(laminated elastomeric bearing and lead-rubber bearing) are designed. manufactured and constructed in the laboratory. Free vibration tests using fuse bars were conducted to evaluate the change of dynamic characteristics(period and damping) before and after base isolation of the steel frame. The experimental results of free vibration tests were also used as a bench mark for adjusting the selected analytical modeling to real base isolated steel frame.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.51-64
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• 1993

Base-isolated liquid storage tanks under seismic loading were tested by the Pseudo-dynamic test method. Substructuring technique in which a mixed integration method was adopted and the liquid tanks were simply modeled as a discrete system. This study gave experimental verification on the advantage of mounting the liquid tanks on base isolators in order to reduce the hydrodynamic forces on the tank wall.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.33-44
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• 2018

Base-isolated nuclear power plant (BI-NPP) structures are founded on expanded basemat as a flexible floating nuclear island, are still lacking the recommendation of the consideration of incoherent motion effect. The effect of incoherent earthquake motion on the seismic response of BI-NPP structure has been investigated herein. The incoherency of the ground motions is applied by using an isotropic frequency-dependent spatial correlation function to perform the conditional simulation of the reference design spectrum compatible ground motion in time domain. Time history analysis of two structural models with 486 and 5 equivalent lead plug rubber bearing (LRB) base-isolators have been done under uniform excitation and multiple point excitation. two different cases have been considered: 1) Incoherent motion generated for soft soil and 2) Incoherent motion generated for hard rock soil. The results show that the incoherent motions reduce acceleration and the lateral displacement responses and the reduction is noticeable at soft soil site and higher frequencies.