New structural seismic protection for high-rise building structures

Presented Structural Seismic Isolation Method (SSIM) aims to provide high safety for Highly Reliable Structures (HRS) against strong earthquakes including near-fault and long-period ground motions. The examined structure is converted to Structural Seismic Isolation System (SSIS) by the SSIM method which exhibited inverse pendulum behaviour. For this purpose, structure foot base and foundation contact surfaces have been designed as any curved surfaces (spherical, elliptical, etc.) depending on the earthquake-soil-superstructure parameters and this contact surfaces have been separated by elastomeric (lead core rubber or laminated rubber bearings) seismic isolation devices. It would allow the structure foot base to turn around gyration centre through rubber bearing contact and maintains similar behaviour to the super-structure. SSIS system provides the possibility of keeping the natural-period of the structure in a larger interval, which is greater than the predominant-period of the majority of possible earthquakes (including near-fault pulse) using currently existing conventional elastomeric isolators with up to 4 second period. Thus, the structure can sustain its serviceability after strong and long-period earthquakes. In this study SSIS system’s performance is presented for high-rise building structures, for this aim, the finite element model of the building (Bg) structure with SSIS system (SSIS-Bg) has been prepared and the nonlinear dynamic analysis of the model has been conducted using strong and long-period ground motions. Results indicate that the base and top accelerations, base shear and base moment responses of the SSIS-Bg structure is 23.21 %, 75.47 % and 85.74 % in average lower than the Conventional Application Method of Seismic Base Isolation Devices for Building (CAMSBID-Bg) structures respectively and it is not prone to resonant vibrations under long-period earthquakes related with the excessive deformation in the isolation layers in case of using CAMSBID-Bg structures. It should be noted that in this study with the presented SSIM method and SSIS system, it is aimed to protect only the Highly Reliable Structures(HRS) from the effects of strong and long-period ground motions and these structures (HRS) are classified as follows: 1) Nuclear Containment Structures; 2) High-rise buildings that contain information, operating systems, sensitive instruments, communication systems, routing systems, bank operating systems, databases, management systems and other similar facilities that are linked to the security and economy of a country; 3) High-rise hospitals etc.