Affiliations: Key Laboratory of Concrete and Prestressed Concrete
Structures of the Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing,
Jiangsu, China | Guangdong Country Garden Holdings Limited Company,
Foshan, Guangdong, China | Department of Mechanical Engineering, North Carolina
State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
Abstract: When designing critical structures such as long-span structures and
high-rise buildings, earthquake excitation in the vertical direction, in
addition to the horizontal direction, should also be taken into consideration.
Study on new devices that can mitigate and isolate multi-dimensional (including
both horizontal and vertical) earthquake actions has a remarkable significance.
A new kind of multi-dimensional earthquake isolation and mitigation device was
recently developed, and experimental study on vertical performances of the
device under different excitation frequencies and amplitudes has been carried
out in this paper. The characteristics of the vertical properties including the
initial stiffness, the energy dissipation stiffness, the energy dissipation per
cycle and the vertical damping ratio changing with excitation frequency and
amplitude were studied, and the formulas describing the characteristics were
proposed. It can be concluded that the initial stiffness and the energy
dissipation stiffness increase slightly with increasing frequency, while the
energy dissipation per cycle and the damping ratio decrease slightly with
increasing frequency, the initial stiffness, the energy dissipation stiffness
and the damping ratio will decrease slightly with increasing excitation
amplitudes, and the proposed formulas can describe the vertical properties of
the multi-dimensional earthquake isolation and mitigation device changing with
excitation frequency and amplitude.
Keywords: Multi-dimensional, earthquake isolation and mitigation device, energy dissipation, viscoelastic, vertical properties, dynamic responses
