Study of the properties of a multi-dimensional earthquake isolation device for reticulated structures

Abstract

The earthquake excitation is a kind of complicated multi-dimensional motion. It is not safe and accurate enough if only considering the horizontal earthquake excitation, especially for complex and important engineering structures. Therefore, anti-earthquake measures for engineering structures considering multi-dimensional excitations have become an extremely important research topic. In this paper, a new multi-dimensional earthquake isolation and mitigation device (MEIMD) is developed and tested under different cases at both horizontal and vertical directions. Effects of excitation frequency and displacement amplitude on both horizontal and vertical properties of this device are considered. At the same time, a modified equivalent standard solid model is proposed, which can effectively describe the effects of frequency and displacement on the horizontal and vertical properties of the device. Research indicates that the MEIMD possesses high-energy dissipation capacity at both horizontal and vertical directions and the proposed model can accurately simulate the value of the storage modulus and the loss factor.