Design Principles of Seismic Isolation

In earthquake resistance design of structures, two general concepts have been used. The first is to increase the capacity of the structures to resist the earthquake load effects (mostly horizontal forces) or to increase the dynamic stiffness such as the seismic energy dissipation ability by adding damping systems (both devices and/or structural fuses). The second concept includes seismic isolation systems to reduce the input load effects on structures. Obviously, both concepts can be integrated to achieve an optimal design of earthquake resilient structures. This chapter is focused on the principles of seismic isolation. It should be pointed out that from the perspective of the structural response control community, earthquake protective systems are generally classified as passive, active and semi-active systems. The passive control area consists of many different categories such as energy dissipation systems, toned-mass systems and vibration isolation systems. This chapter addresses only the passive, seismic isolation systems [Soong and Dargush, 1997; Takewaki, 2009; Liang et al, 2011] Using seismic isolation devices/systems to control earthquake induced vibration of bridges and buildings is considered to be a relatively matured technology and such devices have been installed in many structures world-wide in recent decades. Design guidelines have been established and they are periodically improved as new information based on research and/or field observations become available during the past 20-30 years [ATC 1995; SEAONC 1986; FEMA 1997; IBC 2000; ECS 2000; AASHTO 2010, ASCE 2007, 2010]. Besides the United States, base isolation technologies are also used in Japan, Italy, New Zealand, China, as well as many other countries and regions. [Naiem and Kelly, 1999; Komodromos, 2000; Christopoulos, C. and Filiatrault 2006] Affiliated with the increased use of seismic isolation systems, there is an increased demand of various isolation devices manufactured by different vendors. This growth of installing seismic isolation devices in earthquake engineering has been following the typical pattern experienced in structural engineering development, which begins from a “statics” platform by gradually modifying the design approach to include the seismic effects based on structural dynamics principles as they develop and new field observations on the responses of real-world structures. The process is typically slow because most studies and laboratory observations have been concentrated on the performances of the devices with scaled-down experiments. Results could not be readily scaled-up for design purposes. At the same time, there were very limited field data on the actual performances of seismically isolated