• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.61-84
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• 2010

Presented in this paper is the behaviour of asymmetric building isolated by the double variable frequency pendulum isolator (DVFPI). The DVFPI is an adoption of single variable frequency pendulum isolator (VFPI). The geometry and coefficient of friction of top and bottom sliding surfaces can be unequal. The governing equations of motion of the building-isolation system are derived and solved in incremental form. The analysis duly considers the interaction of frictional forces in the two principal directions developed at each sliding surface of the DVFPI. In order to investigate the behaviour of the base isolation using the DVFPI, the coupled lateral-torsional response is obtained under different parametric variations for a set of six far-fault earthquake ground motions and criterion to optimize its performance is proposed. Further, influences of the initial time period, coefficient of friction and frequency variation factors at the two sliding surfaces are investigated. The numerical results of the extensive parametric study help in understanding the torsional behaviour of the structure isolated with the double sliding surfaces as in the DVFPI. It is found that the performance of the DVFPI can be optimized by designing the top sliding surface initially softer and smoother relative to the bottom one.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.79-89
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• 1997

The objective of this paper is to investigate the mechanical characteristics of the laminated rubber bearings (LRBs) for the seismic isolation. The evaluations of the proposed equations of the LRB horizontal stiffness are carried out and these equations are extended to the visco-elastic problems to investigate the damping amplifications of LRBs. The stability evaluation of LRBs is also performed. For investigation of the dynamic characteristics of LRBs, the horizontal stiffness equations of the LRBs considering the P-delta effects are applied to the modeling of a seismically isolated structure and the earthquake response time history analyses are carried out. From this research, the proposed simple equation of the horizontal stiffness of LRB is so useful for the design loads and easily extended to the visco-elastic problems. Through the stability evaluation of LRB, the increasing ratio of the total rubber thickness of the LRB severely decrecises the bucking load than the increasing ratio of unit rubber thickness. From the comparison of the dynamic shear deflection of LRB, the analysis results are in good agreement with those of the experiments.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.959-982
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• 2015

In this study, a non-stationary random earthquake Clough-Penzien model is used to describe earthquake ground motion. Using stochastic direct integration in combination with an equivalent linear method, a solution is established to describe the non-stationary response of lead-rubber bearing (LRB) system to a stochastic earthquake. Two parameters are used to develop an optimization method for bearing design: the post-yielding stiffness and the normalized yield strength of the isolation bearing. Using the minimization of the maximum energy response level of the upper structure subjected to an earthquake as an objective function, and with the constraints that the bearing failure probability is no more than 5% and the second shape factor of the bearing is less than 5, a calculation method for the two optimal design parameters is presented. In this optimization process, the radial basis function (RBF) response surface was applied, instead of the implicit objective function and constraints, and a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm was used to solve the optimization problems. By considering the uncertainties of the structural parameters and seismic ground motion input parameters for the optimization of the bearing design, convex set models (such as the interval model and ellipsoidal model) are used to describe the uncertainty parameters. Subsequently, the optimal bearing design parameters were expanded at their median values into first-order Taylor series expansions, and then, the Lagrange multipliers method was used to determine the upper and lower boundaries of the parameters. Moreover, using a calculation example, the impacts of site soil parameters, such as input peak ground acceleration, bearing diameter and rubber shore hardness on the optimization parameters, are investigated.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.426-431
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• 2001

Seismic performance of base isolated rigid-mass model were studied through shaking table tests. Friction pendulum systems (FPS), pure-friction systems with laminated rubber bearing (LRB) were selected for the comparison of performance. Performance of specially designed isolation systems were tested statically using actuator and dynamically using shaking table. Numerical methods were developed to simulate the nonlinear behavior of the frictional base isolation systems. Two models were considered. one is modified Bouc-Wen model considering breakaway coefficient of friction and the other is classical Coulomb model. The results of numerical methods are found to be in very good agreement with test results.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.755-770
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• 2009

This study proposes a new smart base isolation system that employs Magneto-Rheological Elastomers (MREs), a class of smart materials whose elastic modulus or stiffness can be varied depending on the magnitude of an applied magnetic field. It also evaluates the dynamic performance of the MRE-based isolation system in reducing vibrations in structures subject to various seismic excitations. As controllable stiffness elements, MREs can increase the dynamic control bandwidth of the isolation system, improving its vibration reduction capability. To study the effectiveness of the MRE-based isolation system, this paper compares its dynamic performance in reducing vibration responses of a base-isolated single-story structure (i.e., 2DOF) with that of a conventional base-isolation system. Moreover, two control algorithms (linear quadratic regulator (LQR)-based control and state-switched control) are considered for regulating the stiffness of MREs. The simulation results show that the MRE-based isolation system outperformed the conventional system in suppressing the maximum base drift, acceleration, and displacement of the structure.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.287-297
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• 2011

This paper presents the results of performance verification tests of the isolated flat plate apartment building with the laminated rubber bearings. The shaking table test is carried out in CABR(China Academy of Building Research) with two 1/10 scale isolation and non-isolation models under 4 excitation waves. The shaking table test is proceeding from x axis, y axis and x+y axis with different amplitude of acceleration values. The results show that, to non-isolated model, the natural vibration period is remarkably decreased and entered non-linear condition after moderate earthquake. Its accelerations become lager with increasing storey number and completely collapsed under large earthquake. The inter-storey shifts largely exceed the limit values of regulated displacement angles. But to isolated model, the natural vibration period of isolated modal is almost the same in all conditions and still in its elastic condition. The earthquake loading is greatly reduced and the accelerations of superstructure are greatly reduced. The inter-storey drifts are very small and can be neglected. The isolated model is in translational state and can be seen as a rigid whole. The displacements of isolation layer are in the allowable range. This experiment demonstrates that the seismic isolation is very effective to mitigate the influence of earthquake on structures and it is possible to increase the serviceability due to decrease the floor acceleration. facilities from their good states that is superior to non-isolated structure.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.597-605
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• 2008

The feasibility study of a newly proposed smart base isolation system employing magneto-rheological elastomers(MREs) has been carried out. MREs belong to a class of smart materials whose elastic modulus or stiffness can be adjusted by varying the magnitude of the magnetic field. The base isolation systems are considered as one of the most effective devices for vibration mitigation of civil engineering structures such as bridges and buildings in the event of earthquakes. The proposed base isolation system strives to enhance the performance of the conventional base isolation system by improving the robustness of the system wide stiffness range controllable of MREs, which improves the adaptability and helps in better vibration control. To validate the effectiveness of the MRE-based isolation system, an extensive numerical simulation study has been performed using both single-story and five-story building structures employing base isolated devices under several historical earthquake excitations. The results show that the proposed system outperformed the conventional system in reducing the responses of the structure in all the seismic excitations considered in the study.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.101-112
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• 1999

Structural walls have been mostly used for the design of reinforced concrete buildings in seismic areas because they play a role as an efficient bracing system and offer great potential for lateral load resistance and drift control. The lateral resistance system for the earthquake load should be designed to have enough ductility and stable hysteretic response in the critical regions where plastic deformation occurred beyond yielding. The behavior of the reinforced concrete element to experience large deformation in the critical areas by a major earthquake is affected by the performance of the confined core concrete. Thus, the confinement of concrete by suitable arrangements of transverse reinforcement results in a significant increase in both the strength and ductility of compressed concrete. This paper reports the experimental results of reinforced concrete structural walls for wall-type apartment structure under axial loads and cyclic reversal of lateral loads with different confinement of the boundary elements. The results show that confinement of the boundary element by open 'U'-bar and cross tie is effective. The shear strength capacity is not increased by the confinement but deformation capacity is improve.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.485-498
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• 2022

In near-fault earthquake prone areas, the velocity pulse-like seismic waves often results in excessive horizontal displacement for structures, which may result in severe structural failure during large or near-fault earthquakes. The recently developed isolator-gap damper (IGD) systems provide a solution for the large horizontal displacement of long period base-isolated structures. However, the hysteresis characteristics of the IGD system are significantly different from the traditional hysteretic behavior. At present, the hysteretic behavior is difficult to be reflected in the structural analysis and performance evaluation especially under random earthquake excitations for lacking of effective analysis models which prevent the application of this kind of IGD system. In this paper, we propose a mathematical hysteretic model for the IGD system that presents its nonlinear hysteretic characteristics. The equivalent linearization is conducted on this nonlinear model, which requires the variances of the IGD responses. The covariance matrix for the responses of the structure and the IGD system is obtained for random earthquake excitations represented by the Kanai-Tajimi spectrum by solving the Lyapunov equation. The responses obtained by the equivalent linearization are verified in comparison with the nonlinear responses by the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) analysis for random earthquake excitations.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.499-512
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• 2016

The boundary reaction method(BRM) is a substructure time domain method, it removes global iterations between frequency and time domain analyses commonly required in the hybrid approaches, so that it operates as a two-step uncoupled method. The BRM offers a two-step method as follows: (1) the calculation of boundary reaction forces in the frequency domain on an interface of linear and nonlinear regions, (2) solving the wave radiation problem subjected to the boundary reaction forces in the time domain. In the time domain analysis, the near-field soil is modeled to simulate the wave radiation problem. This paper evaluates the performance of the BRM according to modeling extent of near-field soil for the nonlinear SSI analysis of base-isolated NPP structure. For this purpose, parametric studies are performed using equivalent linear SSI problems. The accuracy of the BRM solution is evaluated by comparing the BRM solution with that of conventional SSI seismic technique. The numerical results show that the soil condition affects the modeling range of near-field soil for the BRM analysis as well as the size of the basemat. Finally, the BRM is applied for the nonlinear SSI analysis of a base-isolated NPP structure to demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of the method.