CALIBRATION AND MODELING OF ELASTOMERIC BEARINGS WITH UPLIFT RESTRAINERS USING COMERCIAL SOFTWARE

Abstract

The application of seismic isolation in high-rise and slender buildings is increasing in recent times worldwide. Then, it will be more frequent to give sound solutions for projects where significant tensile forces or uplifts would be demanded in corner and perimeter base isolators. For such projects, it would be necessary to use (and design) base isolators with uplift restrainers. There are already sound solutions to include uplift restrainers in elastomeric bearings which efficacy have been shown in shaking table tests. However, their use in real buildings has not been documented yet, perhaps because they are not yet well known or commercially available. Besides, there are no specific elements that may allow to model them directly using commercial structural analysis or finite element software. Then, a-priori, its appropriate discretization in 3D design models is somewhat difficult. In this work, the authors propose and show how can these base isolators with uplift restrainers be modeled in ETABS using a combination of elements already available in its library. The proposed modeling was calibrated and compared with the results obtained from shaking table tests, as reported in the technical literature. The obtained correlations between analytical models and experimental results were reasonable for practical purposes.