Earthquake protector

Educational level: this is a research resource.

Earthquake protector is a type of base isolation intended for protection of building and non-building structures against potentially damaging lateral impact of strong earthquakes ^[1].

Heavy damping mechanism sometimes incorporated in vibration control technologies and, particularly, in base isolation devices, may be considered a valuable source of suppressing vibrations thus enhancing a building's seismic performance. However, for the very pliant systems such as base isolated structures, with a relatively low bearing stiffness but with an high damping, the so-called "damping force" may turn out the main pushing force at a strong earthquake ^[2]. This finding created a theoretical ground in earthquake engineering for a damping-disengaged base isolation technology called Earthquake protector ^[3].

Earthquake protector: shake-table demo [1].

A shake-table video of concurrent shake-table experiments with two identical and kinematically equivalent to their 12-story prototype building models is presented at ^[4]. The right model is resting on Earthquake Protectors, while the left one, caught at the time of its crash, is fixed to the shake-table platen.

Analytical software

Analytical software called EPET or Earthquake Performance Evaluation Tool enables concurrent virtual experiments on the same building models with any sliding type of base isolation, including Earthquake protector, and without.