NON LINEAR TIME HISTORY ANALYSIS OF BASE

ISOLATED STRUCTURE UNDER SEISMIC LOAD

Abstract
Earthquake causes significant loss of life and damage of property every year. Seismic base
isolation is one of the most widely implemented and accepted seismic passive control protection
systems. Base isolation refers to the principle which introduces flexibility to the supports of the
building in the horizontal plane and ensures the period of the buildings outside that of the
earthquakes acting on it. Seismic base isolation is a technique that mitigates the effects of an
earthquake by essentially isolating the structure and its contents from potentially dangerous
ground motion, especially in the frequency range where the building is most affected. Base
isolation is very promising technology to protect different structures like building, water tanks,
bridges, airport terminals and nuclear power plants etc. from seismic excitation..

Keywords —Base isolators, HDRB, LRB, FPS, Nonlinear time history analysis, Base isolation,
Base shear, RC Building, Modular Steel Building.

Introduction

Base isolation decouples the structure from ground during a seismic event and prevent damages
that may occur due to the seismic event. For the past decades, its proven that base isolation is one
the effective and popular methods to reduce the seismic response on these types of structures. It
is a passive control device which is installed between the foundation and base of the building.
The basic principle is either deflection or absorbing the seismic energy. First is achieved by
making the building flexible at the base in lateral directions, this increase the fundamental time
period of the structure. Also the buildings having longer time periods attract less seismic forces.
The nonlinear response of isolators helps in seismic energy absorption. The (internal) force–
displacement curve of isolators under sinusoidal excitation exhibits hysteretic behaviour and,
therefore, much of the input energy to the isolators is lost in the hysteresis loop. Thus the low
lateral stiffness and hysteretic behaviour makes them effective in passive seismic control of
seismic response of buildings. These also re-centres the structure when ground motion due to
earthquake ceases and should be designed in such a way that necessary rigidity is provided under
low service loads. This technique is also used for the seismic retrofit of historic structures,
buildings containing motion sensitive equipment, high risk buildings (eg, nuclear power plants),
buildings of special importance after earthquakes (hospitals, disaster management centres) etc.

1
A typical base isolation must satisfy the three basic criteria listed below:
1. Decoupling action between foundation and superstructure with or without flexible mounting.
2. Energy dissipation action
3. Enough rigidity under low in-service loads

Fig -1: Lead Rubber Bearing isolator components

Effectiveness of Base Isolation System

Seismic base isolation has been used for reducing the earthquake impact on buildings. But often
displacements at base and near ground stories were having a larger value even though base shear
and story accelerations are reduced. The effectiveness of this technique depends upon the
lengthening time period of building and this results in reduced seismic forces in buildings. The
drawbacks of the conventional seismic design used in a fixed structure has paved way for the
idea of base isolation but lack of technology in manufacturing and analyzing the isolators
prevented their proper usage in buildings for the past 35 years. But now things have changed in
the field of dynamic structural analysis by computers, high quality laminated elastomeric
bearings and in case of energy dissipating devices, feasibility studies are carried with accuracy
and ease. The effectiveness of isolation depends upon the input seismic unit, design parameters
like soil type, building type etc and functionality like historical importance, lifeline structures
etc. It’s a pre requisite building requirement that provides the functionality of the building even
in severe earthquake events. Thus preventing the entire building to be in a unusable stage that
causes further business crisis and the rebuilding or repairing is costly and time dependent task.
The benefits are reduced floor accelerations and inter storey drifts, better protection of buildings
and its contents, keeping the structural behaviour elastic or in its range. The major one is
increasing the life of the structure as predicted like in countries like Japan there is always
uncertainties in the earthquake occurrence and long term benefits are required for the safety of
the buildings.

2
 Fig. 2Function of Base Isolation system

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Manoj U Deosarkar and S D Gowardhan (2015), in their work a G+5 storey symmetrical &
asymmetrical RCC building is taken to analyze and design. The main aim of this thesis is to
reduce storey shear, storey acceleration and storey drifts due to earthquake excitation, by
installing base isolator at the foundation level and also to compare the performances between
fixed and isolated base condition of a symmetric and an asymmetric building. The three basic
base isolation systems, high damping rubber bearing, lead rubber bearing and friction pendulum
system has been used in this work at foundation level for the buildings considered. Time history
analysis has been carried out on Bhuj earthquake which is of intensity is 7.7. The response of the
buildings on the combined isolation system was compared with the buildings mounted on
separate base isolation system. It has been confirmed in this study that the use of base isolation
system reduces the structural responses under seismic forces. The results of the isolated base
condition with that of fixed base condition has been compared and it has been found that the
isolated base system reduces storey shear, storey acceleration and storey drifts also it increases
the displacements and time period. The building with High damping rubber bearing and
combined isolation system with lead rubber bearing and high damping rubber bearing is having
the most reduction in base shear for symmetric and asymmetric plan compared to other models.
The storey accelerations are reduced when lead rubber and friction pendulum bearings are used
in combination. The variation of floor displacement and story drift is minimum in isolated type
buildings with the increase in height. The effective base isolation was observed when friction
pendulum bearings were used on outer columns and lead rubber and high damping rubber
isolators in inner column.

Prof. N Murali Krishna and Md Masihuddin Siddiqui (2017), The aim of the present work is
to reduce seismic response of structures using shear wall and base isolators in SAP 2000. The
layout of plan having asymmetric 3x3 bays of equal length of 4m. The plan is kept same for all
buildings by varying floor levels of 4, 7, 10 and 20. Four buildings by varying floor levels of

3
fixed base (normal structure), four buildings by varying floor levels with shear wall and four
buildings by varying floor levels with base isolation are considered for the study and the
structures are subjected to seismic excitations and observed the reduction in seismic response.
The BHUJ earthquake data is used as ground motion data for performing non-linear time history
analysis. In total 12 building structures were modeled in SAP 2000, which were subjected to
gravity loads and lateral loads as per IS codes. The structural models were analyzed and designed
using the provisions of IS 456-2000. Then these models were subjected to Nonlinear Dynamic
loading in the form of Time History data, by Double Integration method. The use of Shear wall
and Base isolation technique in asymmetrical buildings have showed good results when it is
compared with that obtained from the asymmetrical buildings without base isolation (fixed base).

Y. S. Salem and K. Sham(2012), The main purpose of their study is to evaluate the overstrength
and response modification factors of a typical module structure. A model structure was designed
in accordance with IBC 2000 and AISC seismic provisions for structural steel buildings and ACI
318-08 seismic provision of reinforced concrete buildings. Nonlinear static pushover analysis
and nonlinear time history dynamic analysis were carried out to obtain such behaviour factors;
the ultimate goal is to implement the results of this study into the design guidelines for heavy
industrial structures such as ASCE7. In conclusion, the overstrength, ductility, and the response
modification factors of the modular structure were calculated. It was found that response
modification factor for ordinary braced structure which is currently used in practice
underestimate the response modification factor that would be expected from a typical modular
structure.

Anju Agarwal, Nirendra Dev and Ibadur Rahman (2017), In this study, A single bay 2d
building frame of ten story height has been investigated to study the response of base-isolated
building. The model is been analyzed for two different cases. In the first case the model is
analyzed assuming fixed supportcondition at the base of the columns and in the second case
analyzed using laminated rubber bearing as base isolators. The dynamic non-linear time history
analysis is been performed using SAP 2000 for both the fixed support condition and also using
laminated rubber bearings as base isolators. The structural models are analysed under two
records of near fault ground motions. Two earthquake events selected as near source ground
motions are the 1994 Northridge and the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquakes. These records
contain strong velocity and displacement pulses of relatively long periods which distinguish
them from typical far field earthquakes. Analytical results from the model reveal that energy
dissipation can be achieved for both the near fault ground motions by incorporation of bearing at
the base. It can be observed that top floor absolute acceleration, base shear and top floor lateral
displacement are considerably reduced by the use of the laminated bearing.

Rakshith K. J., Spandana B. and Ganesh M. (2017), The modeling of fixed base and base
isolated building is done by ETABS 2016 software. G+14 stories RCC building is considered

4
with fixed base and base isolated with two different isolators like lead rubber bearing and high
damping rubber bearing. Time history analysis is done using ElCentro and Bhuj time history
data. From the analytical results, it is observed that how effective seismic isolation works but
considering various aspects such as: base shear, story drift, story acceleration, Story
displacement etc. Analysis results of the study suggest that high damping rubber isolator is better
compared to lead rubber bearing isolator.

Conclusion:
 The concept of base isolation is not a recent topic and recent developments in full-
scale shake table testing and advancement in accurate software oriented analysis
has made this technique more acceptable.
 This technique ensures a simultaneous reduction acceleration and drift responses
of the building even under a large and unpredictable seismic event.
 The results suggested that base isolations were excellent seismic control device
for low-rise asymmetric buildings where as shear wall were excellent for high-rise
asymmetric buildings
 However, there are still gaps in the research to be filled like seismic isolation
cannot ensure a complete protection of buildings, challenges are still there like
how to protect components of buildings subjected to vertical excitation,
mitigation of overturning forces in slender structures which causes local uplifts
and superstructure yielding in extreme events.

References:
1. Manoj U Deosarkar and S D Gowardhan, “Seismic Performance of Combined
Isolation System for Asymmetric Buildings Using Non Linear Time History
Analysis”, International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering
and Technology, Vol. 4, Issue 12, December 2015
2. Prof. N Murali Krishna and Md Masihuddin Siddiqui,, “Non Linear Time History
Analysis of Building with Seismic Control Systems”, International Journal of
Science Technology & Engineering, Volume 2, Issue 08, February 2016
3. Y. S. Salem and K. Sham, “Nonlinear Time-History Analysis of Modular
Structures Isolated by Sliding Plates under Seismic Loads”, 15th World
conference for earthquake engineering, Lisboa 2012.
4. Anju Agarwal, Nirendra Dev and Ibadur Rahman, “Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis
of Base Isolated Reinforced Concrete Building”, International Journal of
Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology, Vol. 6, Issue 7,
July 2017
5. Rakshith K. J., Spandana B. and Ganesh M., “Time History Analysis of Fixed
Base and Base Isolated Reinforced Concrete Building”, International Research
Journal of Engineering and Technology, Volume: 04, Issue: 07, July -2017