Experimental Study of Seismic Isolated Structures with Sliding Implant-Magnetic Bearings

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sliding implant-magnetic bearing (IMB) is a new type of seismic isolators that benefits from its adaptive energy-dissipation behavior. In order to assess the performance of the sliding IMB for seismic protection, a complete shaking table test on the base-isolated structure is reported in the present paper. Tri-directional-recorded earthquake ground motions and mono-directional artificial earthquake ground motions pertaining to both site classes II and III are employed to drive structural vibration in the laboratory experiment, respectively. Seismic mitigation of the base-isolated structure with respect to dynamic characteristics, story accelerations, inter-story drifts, horizontal torsions, and local strains is addressed. Experimental study shows expected results that the base-isolated structure with sliding IMBs attains more profitable mitigations on story accelerations and inter-story drifts under earthquake ground motions pertaining to the stiff soil site than those pertaining to the soft soil site. Significant mitigations on horizontal torsion of the structure and on local strain at the column bottom are attained as well. In addition, seismic performance of sliding IMBs during the shaking table test is assessed. It is revealed that the isolators exhibit satisfactory energy-dissipation capacity and excellent frictional behavior, and maintain good working state during the entire experimental test.