- Earthquake Protector
Heavy
damping mechanism sometimes incorporated invibration control technologies and, particularly, inbase isolation devices may be considered a valuable source of suppressing vibrations thus enhancing a building'sseismic performance . However, for the very pliant systems such as base isolatedstructures , with a relatively low bearingstiffness but with an highdamping , the so-called "damping force" may turn out the main pushing force at a strongearthquake [http://www.ecs.csun.edu/~shustov/Topic4.htm] . This finding created a theoretical ground inearthquake engineering for a damping-disengagedbase isolation technology called Earthquake Protector [https://central.nees.org/data/get/NEES-2006-0283/Public/REPORT.pdf] .A video clip of concurrent shake-table experiments with two identical and kinematically equivalent to their 12-story prototype
building model s is presented at [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzVvd4Dk6sw] . The right model is resting on Earthquake Protectors, while the left one, caught at the time of its crash, is fixed to the shake-table platen [https://central.nees.org/?action=DisplayProjectMain&projid=283] . At this experiment, the fundamental natural period of thebuilding model superstructure is about 1.2s, the isolated period of the Earthquake Protector is 5.0s, the range of theearthquake simulation periods is 0.02 - 2.00s, and the maximum ground acceleration is about 1.0g [http://www.ecs.csun.edu/~shustov/EP-2006.htm] .Analytical software called Earthquake Performance Evaluation Tool (EPET) enables
concurrent virtual experiments on the samebuilding model s "with" and "without"Earthquake Protector s.
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