Geotechnical Seismic Isolation System - Experimental Study

Abstract

In this study, an experimental investigation program on a newly proposed seismic isolation technique, namely “Geotechnical Seismic Isolation (GSI) system”, is conducted with an aim of simulating its dynamic performance during earthquakes. The testing procedure is three-fold: (1) A series of cyclic simple shear tests is conducted on the key constituent material of the proposed GSI system, i.e., rubber-sand mixture (RSM) in order to understand its behavior under cyclic loadings. (2) The GSI system is then subjected to a series of shaking table tests with different levels of input ground shakings. (3) By varying the controlling parameters such as percentage of rubber in RSM, thickness of RSM layer, coupled with the weight of superstructure, a comprehensive parametric study is performed. This experimental survey demonstrates the excellent performance of the GSI system for potential seismic hazard mitigation.