Experimental Evaluation of Piecewise Exact Solution for Structure Isolated With Sliding Type Isolators Under Bidirectional Earthquake

In recent years, the base isolation technology has been recognized as a popular and an efficient way to upgrade the earthquake proof capability of a conventional fixed-base structure. Because the first mode of a base-isolated structure participates the most part of the seismic response from the point view of the modal analysis, it is reasonable to develop a simple method to evaluate the seismic responses of a base-isolated structure by assuming that the superstructure behaves as a rigid body during earthquakes. In this study, a piecewise exact solution for a structure isolated with a sliding type of isolators under bidirectional earthquakes has been developed. The comparisons between the experimental results and the piecewise exact solutions show that the proposed method can well simulate the nonlinear behavior of a structure equipped with sliding-type isolators when subjected to bidirectional earthquakes.