• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.55-61
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• 2008

One of the most recent base-isolation systems to improve the earthquake resistance of structures is the Friction Pendulum System(FPS). Simple in design but with versatile properties, the FPS has been used in some of the world s largest seismically isolated buildings, bridges and chemical tanks. FPS using PTFE(Polytetrafl-uoroethylene) based material has been developed to provide a simple and effective way for structures to achieve earthquake resistance. PTFE materials are soft, and are apt to become deformed easily after a few working cycles. In this study, magnetic force is used rather than the usual PTFE materials to improve the material shortcomings. A MF-FPS(Magnetic force-Friction Pendulum System) is proposed, and us shown to effectively protect structures against earthquakes. To demonstrate the advantages of this new system, the MF-FPS is compared with FPS as an attempt to prove its performance. A six-degree-of-freedom model is considered as a numerical example. The ground acceleration data of El Centro, Mexico and Gebze earthquakes are used as seismic excitations. The results showed that MF-FPS improved performance compared with FPS.

• 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.

• 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.