Earthquake-Resilient Design of Seismically Isolated Buildings: A Review of Technology

Abstract

Earthquake Seismic isolation plays an important role in achieving sustainable earthquake resilience communities. Seismic isolation method is a justified, mature, and reliable performance enhancement strategy for a wide range of structural systems and valuable contents. As a result of the targeted response modification, high-performance expectations and earthquake resilience can be achieved during the service life of the structures that are compliant with the design code requirements. Design and analysis procedures of isolation systems in standards were evolved substantially to expand the use of isolation technology and quantify the benefits of isolation systems to overcome the existing impediments. Strictly speaking, new tools are offered to the engineering community to highlight the possible issues that may appear in isolation units beyond the design basis earthquake level to improve the accuracy of response prediction. This paper aims to overview the characteristics of frequently used isolation systems in the industry with mathematical models, design criteria toward sustainable communities, the current state of practice along with the set forth design requirements of selectively well-known standards with special emphasis to the ELF procedure from the perspective of performance-based design philosophy. Additionally, two large-scale seismic isolation applications in the world are given as benchmark studies for the new construction and upgrading scheme in the content of the study.