Mathematical Modelling of a Seismic Isolation System to Protect Structures During Damaging Earthquakes

摘要

The present study aims to determine the effectiveness of a nonlinear mathematical model in simulating complex mechanical behaviour of a seismic isolation system to protect structures during strong and damaging earthquakes. In order to construct the Polymeric Bearings considered in this research, a specially prepared flexible polyurethane elastomer with increased damping properties has been used. The usefulness of the proposed mathematical model has been verified by comparing the dynamic response of a base-isolated single-storey structure model under various seismic excitations with the results obtained from the detailed numerical analyses where the previously examined experimental model has been considered as a multi-degree-of-freedom system. The results obtained from the numerical investigation using lumped-mass models have confirmed that the proposed nonlinear mathematical model can be successfully used to simulate the complex mechanical behaviour of the Polymeric Bearings in numerical analyses.