Parameter Optimization of a Vertical Spring-Viscous Damper-Coulomb Friction System

A vertical spring-viscous damper-concave Coulomb friction isolation system was firstly proposed, and their parameters were firstly optimized to achieve the best performance under earthquakes. An incremental dynamic analysis method (IDA) and a performance-based assessment framework were used to calculate the system and assess its seismic vulnerability, respectively. Results show that both the friction force and the horizontal component of spring force gradually increase when an earthquake enforce the isolator to slide from its central location. Although other papers propose that an increase of spring force and a decrease of friction force can reduce the structural residual displacement, this paper can minimize the residual displacement value to be 0 by using a super lubrication in the middle of contact surface and a variable increment ratio of concave friction distribution. The reason is that the horizontal component of spring force is always greater than the friction force within any relative displacement between the structure and the ground in this paper. As for the peak relative displacement and peak acceleration of structure, one is reduced while the other is increased when selecting the optimal isolation parameters. If the structure is very sensitive to the acceleration response, a low friction parameter, a small spring constant, and a small and even zero damping constant could be adopted to yield a small peak acceleration of system. The tightness of vertical spring can be adjusted to be appropriately loose to continuously reduce the structural acceleration response.