An Experimental Study for the Shear Property and the Temperature Dependency of Seismic Isolation Bearings

Seismic isolation has been studied continuously as a solution of the seismic engineering to reduce the sectional forces and the damages of structures caused by earthquakes. To certify reliable design and installation of the seismic isolation systems, seismic isolation bearings should be fabricated under well planned quality control process, and proper evaluation tests for their seismic performance should be followed. In this study, shear property evaluation tests for the lead rubber bearings(LRB) and the rubber bearings(RB) were implemented and the temperature dependency tests were also implemented to evaluate the changes of shear properties according to the changes of temperature. After evaluation tests, the measured shear properties were compared to their design values and their deviation was analyzed comparing with the allowable error ranges specified in Highway Bridge Design Specifications. These results showed that a considerable number of isolation bearings have so large deviations from their design values that their error ranges were over or very close to the allowable ranges. And the test results for temperature dependency showed that the shear properties of isolation bearings would be changed in great degree by the change of temperature during their service period. If these two types of changes in their shear properties are superposed, it would possible that the changes of shear properties from their original design values are over than 50%.