A two degree of freedom stable quasi-zero stiffness prototype and its applications in aseismic engineering

Abstract

In this paper, an archetypal aseismic system is proposed with 2-degree of freedom based on a smooth and discontinuous (SD) oscillator to avoid the failure of electric power system under the complex excitation of seismic waves. This model comprises two vibration isolation units for the orthogonal horizontal directions, and each of them admits the stable quasi-zero stiffness (SQZS) with a pair of inclined linear elastic springs. The equation of motion is formulated by using Lagrange equation, and the SQZS condition is obtained by optimizing the parameters of the system. The analysis shows that the system behaves a remarkable vibration isolation performance with low resonant frequency and a large stroke of SQZS interval. The experimental investigations are carried out to show a high sonsistency with the theoretical results, which demonstrates the improvement of aseismic behavior of the proposed model under the seismic wave.