Seismic isolation code developments and significant applications in Turkey

Abstract

There is a special need to preserve the functionality of critical structures, such as hospitals, under severe earthquakes. In this sense, seismic isolation technology serves as a vital design method for the protection of their functionality.In Turkey, seismic isolation technology has been applied at an accelerated pace to new or retrofitted buildings and infrastructures for earthquake protection essentially after the 1999 Kocaeli Mw7.4 Earthquake. Several guidelines and a new official code are prepared to encourage and regulate the on-going applications.To enable the post-earthquake functionality of hospitals, the Ministry of Health public private partnership program foresees to build health campuses with seismic isolation. As of 2017, 21 health projects are complete or under construction with total investment of more than USD 23 billion.Following a general review of seismic isolation design, the essential features of the recent seismic isolation code are provided and compared with European, Japanese and US Codes.After a brief survey of base isolated hospitals in the world, two examples of large scale hospitals with seismic isolation are provided.The Basibüyük Training and Research Hospital in Istanbul, retrofitted with seismic isolation, encompasses 750 beds in 113.000 m2 floor area and is the largest hospital in the world retrofitted with a seismic isolation system consisting of 688 lead rubber and 154 sliding bearings.The newly built Adana Integrated Health Campus (City Hospital) has 430,000 m2 floor area and houses 1500 beds. With an isolation system composed of 1552 triple curved surface friction sliders, the hospital is currently the largest base isolated hospital in the world.