ABSTRACT

Base isolation which lead-rubber bearing employing a heavy damping mechanism incorporated in vibration control technologies and, is often considered a valuable source of suppressing vibrations thus enhancing a building's seismic performance. However, for the rather pliant systems such as base isolated but structures, with high with a relatively the low bearing damping

stiffness

damping,

so-called

force may turn out the main pushing force at a strong earthquake.

Recent devastation of many earthquakes and tidal wave activities around the world has awakened many designers in construction industry and subject that is much looked up is to design structure such a way that even after seismic activities much less damages can be incurred, resulting

less human causalities. Few of points raised by structural designers are conventional approaches-earthquake resistant design of buildings; and providing building with strength, which are

stiffness great

inelastic to

deformation a given

capacity level of

enough

withstand

earthquake-

generated force. i

In

1978,

more

convincing

demonstration

of

the

isolation concept was achieved with a more realistic fivestory, three-bay model weighing 40 tons and by using

damping-enhanced bearings made by commercial techniques. A strong interest throughout the EERC research program was in the influence of isolation on the response of equipment and contents in a structure, which tend to sustain more damage when conventional methods of seismic-resistant design are used and which, in many buildings, are much more costly than the structure itself. An extensive series of tests on the five-story frame demonstrated that isolation with

rubber bearings could provide very substantial reductions in the accelerations the the experienced by internal by the when equipment, structure. additional devices,

exceeding However, elements

reductions same as tests

experienced showed

that

(such

steel

energy-absorbing

frictional systems, or lead plugs in the bearings) were added to the in isolation system to to increase damping, were the not

reductions

acceleration

the

equipment

achieved because the added elements also induced responses in the higher It modes became of the structure, the affecting method the of

equipment.

clear

that

optimum

increasing damping was to provide it in the rubber compound ii

itself.

This by

method MRPRA

was and

applied used in

later the

in

the

compound

developed

first

base-isolated

building in the United States.

Experiments and observations of base-isolated buildings in earthquakes have been shown to reduce building

accelerations to as little as one fourth of acceleration of comparable to fixed-base buildings, which each building

undergoes as a percentage of gravity as inertial forces increase, and decrease, proportionally as acceleration

increases or decreases. Acceleration is decreased because lead rubber base isolation system lengthens a building's period of vibration, (the time it takes for the building to rock back and forth and then back again). And in general, structures with longer periods of vibration tend to reduce acceleration, while those with shorter periods tend to

increase or amplify acceleration.

In addition to displacing toward one side, the unisolated changing basically earthquake building its (without a lead rubber to bearing) a will be

shape-from the

rectangle

parallelogram, cause by of

deforming damage to

building. is

The

primary

buildings iii

deformation

which

building undergoes as a result of inertial forces acting upon it.

Base several

isolation reasons. in

has The

advanced

rapidly for with base

in

Japan

for and

expenditure is high for

research a

development amount large

engineering

significant the the

designated construction

specifically companies

isolation; market

aggressively

technology; the approval process for constructing a baseisolated building is a straightforward and standardized

process; and the high seismicity of Japan encourages the Japanese to favor the long-term benefits of life safety and building decisions. life-cycle costs when making seismic design

The system most commonly used in the past has been natural rubber bearings with mechanical dampers or leadrubber bearings. Recently, however, there has been an

increasing use of high-damping natural rubber isolators.

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TABLE OF CONTENT ABSTRACT..................................................i TABLE OF CONTENTS.........................................v SECTION 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Lead Rubber Bearings..................................1 1.2 Base Isolated Structures..............................5 SECTION 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS 2.1 Construction of Base Isolation........................6 2.1.1 Rubber.........................................6 2.1.2 Lead...........................................7 2.1.3 Steel..........................................7 2.2 The Design and Characteristics of (MAURER-LRB)s.......8 2.3 Basic Principle of Seismic Isolation by Energy Mitigation realized with (MLRB)s.....................9 2.3.1 The fundamental Functions of MAURER-(LRB)s.....11 2.4 Research at EERC......................................13 2.5 U.S. Applications.....................................17 2.6 Nuclear Applications..................................21 SECTION 3. RESULTS 3.1 Function of Base Isolation............................22 3.2 Advantages of Lead Center core in Bearings............25 3.3 U.S. Application Response.............................27 3.4 Base Isolation in Japan...............................28 v

SECTION 4. CONCLUSION.....................................31 SECTION 5. REFERENCES.....................................36

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