Monitoring of soft high damping elastomeric bearings for earthquake isolation.

摘要

Over the last 20 years several practical systems for the protection of buildings and their contents against the effects of earthquakes were developed. These systems rely on effectively decoupling the building from the strong horizontal ground accelerations that are some of the most damaging features of an earthquake. The isolation of small buildings against earthquakes poses particular problems for high damping elastomer. systems. It was recognized that one way to overcome these problems was to use elastomers with particularly low moduli, high damping and other necessary characteristics. This paper describes some key features of the development of soft high damping natural bearings. Their use for the earthquake isolation of a small highly instrumented building at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan is discussed. The paper focuses on the monitoring of the bearings during production and their performance in situ under static and earthquake (dynamic) conditions.