BASE ISOLATION

Base isolation or seismic isolation is a collection of special units in a building resting on

its foundation to provide separation of the building from the shaking ground thus improving
its seismic performance
The base isolation is installed under the structural base and three actuators are placed at the lowest
level.
The BI system decouple the building from the horizontal ground motion induced by earthquake,
and offer a very stiff vertical components to the base level of the superstructure in connection to
substructure (foundation)
An actuators is a component of a machine that is responsible for moving or controlling a mechanism
or system by converting energy into motion.
There are two control method , active and passive control method.
The structural control can provide the potential protection through passive and active control
techniques
The control objective is to reduce the structural responses in the motion of three directions.
Different controllers are designed to examine the performance under different types of excitation.
Finally, this control system is tested on the shake table for evaluation of the controllers, and the
two-dimensional control strategy is also realized through the whole procedures.
Base isolation systems have been demonstrated to be able to reduce the structural responses under
seismic excitation.
Passive base isolation has been widely applied to either buildings or bridges because of its cost-
effectiveness and the simplicity of its implementation.
These systems usually consist of rubber bearings and lead rubber bearings for increasing the
structural flexure and the structural natural period.
For example, the rubber bearings are installed underneath the structural base, the first natural
frequency will be decreased compared to the original one. Therefore, the base displacement may
become large, even exceed the prescribed limit. To reduce the displacement of the isolation layer,
those bearings are designed in accordance to the level of the vibration, such as the earthquake
input, to guarantee the performance.
Hybrid base isolation systems with semi-active devices [1], named smart base isolation systems,
have been proven to be effective against a wide range of ground excitations. The smart base
isolation systems can potentially reduce the associated displacement at base and slightly increase
the structural acceleration.
This type of hybrid systems is able to mitigate the base displacement without increasing the
absolute acceleration of structures.

If the earthquake has natural frequencies with high energy that match the natural frequencies of
the building, it will cause the building to oscillate violently in harmony with the earthquake
frequency. However, if the natural frequency of the building can be changed to a frequency that
does not coincide with that of earthquakes, the building is less likely to fail.
The base isolator reduces the stiffness of the structure and thereby lowers its natural frequency.