On development of a new seismic base isolation system

Sanjukta Chakraborty (1) Koushik Roy (2) Chetan Chinta Arun (3) and Samit Ray Chaudhuri (4)
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, UP-208016, India
(1)

sanjukta@iitk.ac.in, (2)koushik@iitk.ac.in (3) samitrc@iitk.ac.in

Abstract. Various base isolation schemes have been implemented to isolate a structure from intense base excitations. In this paper, performance of a friction sliding bearing with nonlinear restoring mechanism is studied on a three-storey steel moment-resisting frame building under varying seismic hazard conditions. The performance of the proposed system is compared with that of the fixed-base and with only the friction sliding bearing. For this purpose, the effectiveness of the proposed isolation system is evaluated in terms of the residual displacement, peak inter-storey drift and the maximum base displacement. It is envisioned that a system as proposed here, if optimized for a target hazard situation, will result in a costeffective solution. Keywords: Non-linear spring, Friction sliding bearing,

Introduction

Seismic base isolation is becoming a cost effective way to mitigate the seismic vulnerability of various structures and bridges. Over the years, many types of base isolation devices have been proposed. Although these devices have pros and cons, the selection of these devices is mainly decided based on their expected performance under earthquake motions of various hazard levels and more importantly, their cost of installations. Sliding base isolation system has widely been used as a cost effective choice to reduce seismic vulnerability of the structures and bridges. While this type of isolation system is insensitive to dominant frequency of ground motion, it does not possess a restoring mechanism. As a result, a structure isolated with this type of device requires a large base plate to accommodate excessive base displacement in addition to end barriers to prevent the structure from the falling of the plate. Further, high frequency shock waves are generated when the isolator hits the barrier during strong earthquakes resulting in damage to non structural component s and systems. In this study, the concept of nonlinear restoring mechanism is employed to improve the performance of a conventional sliding isolation system. The nonlinear restoring mechanism has been achieved by designing nonlinear springs for which the stiffness increases with an increase in displacement. An extensive parametric study involving time history analysis of structure and subjected to a suite of ground motions with different hazard levels is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed isolation system. It is observed from the results of the parametric study that the proposed isolation system ( Sliding bearing with nonlinear spring) reduces the earthquake response of the structure in terms of residual and peak base displacement demands while keeping the peak inters story drift within the safe limit. It is envisioned that the proposed isolation system when tested experimentally, can be used as a better choice over the conventional sliding bearing.

Spring Model

In this section a brief description of the spring model as well as the mathematical formulation is presented. The desired behavior of the spring as described earlier can be achieved by a conical spring with uniform pitch. The conical spring with increasing diameter towards the bottom provides a varying flexibility each loop. Therefore the bottom loop grounds first as the force on the conical spring increases followed by other loops with reducing diameter and also decrease in the active number of loops. Thus the stiffness of the spring increases gradually along with the increase in displacement of the coil. Working characteristics can be
adfa, p. 1, 2011. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

divided into two regions- working region with linear characteristics where no coil is grounded and working region with progressive characteristics after the contact of the first active coil. The variation of the loop diameter of the conical spring along with the length can be considered to be linear or some other types of variation also can be assumed. Here two types of variations are studied. One spring is considered with a linear reduction in the diameter along the length and other one having logarithmic spiral type of variation in diameter along length.

Fig 1. A typical spring conical spring model showing different component

From Castiglianos Theorem

(1)

(2)

The equation of logarithmic spiral is given by from equation (3) For deflection in between two different angle 1 and 2 the deflection can be estimated from equation 2 as below. [ [
3.5 x 10
4

(4) ] ] (5) (6)

Stiffness plot
3

2.5

Force (N)

1.5

0.5 0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8 Deflection (m)

0.9

1.1

1.2

Fig 2. The force displacement plot of the spring with logarithmic variation of diameter

Similarly the equation for the linear variation is given by { } (7)


x 10
4

(8)

4.5 4 3.5 3

Stiffness Plot

Force (N)

2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.2

1.4

Deflection (m)

Fig 3. The force displacement plot of the spring with linear variation of diameter

where d=diameter of the wire the spring made of steel, G= Shear modulus, N=Total number of loop, n1 and n2 = the loop number the deflection to be calculated, Ds= Diameter of the tapered section, De= Diameter of the larger side, and F=Force to be applied. The two types of springs exhibited similar types of stiffness behavior with a very flat range at the beginning and a very high stiffness at larger deformation. Both the plot of the springs as shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3 considered same parameters as stated above for the spring design. However the spring with linear diameter variation is considered further because of its feasibility and higher stiffness at larger deformation as compared to the spring with logarithmic variation.

Numerical Model

Steel moment resisting frame building with four storeyss and originally with fixed base is considered. The buildings consist of American standard steel sections with uniform mass distribution over their height and a non uniform distribution of lateral stiffness. The beams and columns were assigned with various W sections and the materials used were uniaxial material, `Steel01' with (kinematic) hardening ratio of 3%. All these elements were modeled as Beam with hinges with length of plastic hinges taken as 10% of the member length and each of the nodes were lumped with a mass of 16000 kg. The damping was given as 2% Rayleigh damping for the first two modes. The base isolator was modeled using Flat slider bearing element. The nonlinear force deformation behavior is considered by using an elastic bilinear material with the properties as per the spring design as mentioned earlier. The numerical modeling of the FSB isolation was done in OpenSees using flat slider bearing element, defined by two nodes. A zero length bearing element which is defined by two nodes is used to model the same. These two nodes represent the flat sliding surface and the slider. The bearing has unidirectional (2D) friction properties for the shear deformations, and force-deformation behaviors defined by uniaxial materials in the remaining two (2D) directions. Coulombs friction model is used with a friction coefficient equal to 0.05 yield displacement as 0.002. To capture the uplift behavior of the bearings, user specified no-tension behavior uniaxial material in the axial direction is used. P-Delta moments are entirely transferred to the flat sliding surface. The numerical modeling of the nonlinear spring element was done in OpenSees using zero length elements. The force-deformation behavior of element was defined by 40 different Elastic bilinear materials. This study utilizes 60 ground motions (SAC,2008) for the nonlinear time history analysis. Among these ground motions, 20 represents a hazard level of 2% in 50 years, 20 of them represents a hazard level of 10% in 50 years and remaining 20 represents a hazard level of 50% in 50 years. These ground motions include both recorded as well as simulated one and scaled to match response spectrum of a particular hazard level. They were mainly developed for the analysis of a steel moment resisting frames in Los Angeles area, USA.

These motions cover a broad range of peak ground accelerations (PGA) between 0.11g and 1.33g, peak ground velocity (PGV) between 21.67cm/sec and 245.41 cm/sec, and peak ground displacements (PGD) between 5.4 cm and 93.43 cm in addition to wide band frequency content and a wide range of strong motion duration. Some of them even possess strong near fault pulse.

Result and Discussion

Nonlinear time history analysis of the structure with flat sliding bearing plus nonlinear spring is carried out for a particular value of coefficient of friction (=0.05). The results obtained from the analysis are compared with the nonlinear analysis results of the structure with fixed base and sliding base with no restoring mechanism. The parameters used for the comparisons are -peak inter-storey drift ratio of the structure, residual displacement of the structure and the maximum base displacement. Statistical comparison is performed to observe the pattern of the above parameters. For this statistical comparison mean, maximum and the standard deviation values are calculated and are summarized in a tabular form. The results are further subcategorized in three parts depending on the hazard level. These parameters are the measures of damage that a structure undergoes after an earthquake. FEMA-356 has specified three performance levels, these beings the immediate occupancy (IO), the life safety (LS) and the collapse prevention (CP). These are associated with the inter-storey drift limits of 0.7%, 2.5% and 5%, respectively. These limits are said to be appropriate for the performance evaluation of pre-Northridge steel moment frames. FEMA-356 prescribes a basic safety objective (BSO), which comprises a dual-level performance objective. It requires LS performance for a 10% in 50-year event and CP performance level for a 2% in 50-year earthquake. According to these guidelines, the drifts should be such that for LA01- LA20 ground motions, the structures should be safe in Life Safety; LA21-LA40, the buildings should not be crossing the performance level of Collapse Prevention and Immediate Occupancy in case of LA41-LA60. LA01-LA20, LA21-LA40 and LA41-LA60 are corresponding to ground motion representing hazard level of 2%, 10% and 50% respectively. Peak Inter-storey Drift Ratio- It is observed (Table) that the inter storey drift ratio is exceeding the allowable range as prescribed by FEMA-356 for the fixed base building. At a particular coefficient of friction, the peak inter-storey drift ratio of the structure having flat sliding bearing with nonlinear spring are almost similar compared to the flat sliding bearing without nonlinear spring and this range is well inside the limit for a specific hazard level. . A rather decreasing pattern is observed for the case of sliding isolator with spring.
Table 1. Peak interstorey drift ratio at different hazard level for different base condition
Comparison of Peak inter-storey drift ratio in percentage 10% in 50 years (La01La20) Mean peak inter-storey drift (%) 3.22 0.411 0.323 Mean+SD of peak interstorey drift (%) 2% in 50 years (La21-La40) Mean peak inter-storey drift (%) 6.97 0.478 0.399 Mean+SD of peak interstorey drift(%) 50% in 50 years (La41La60) Mean peak inter-storey drift (%) 1.47 0.349 0.291 Mean+SD of peak interstorey drift (%)

Coefficient of friction()=0.05

FB SI_no spring SI_with spring

4.62 0.493 0.373

9.68 0.571 0.468

2.15 0.411 0.333

Residual displacement- This is an important parameter for this study to unfold the importance of the necessity of nonlinear spring in a sliding bearing. The residual displacement acts as an important measure of postearthquake functionality in determining whether a structure is safe and usable to the occupants. The large residual displacement alters the new rest position of the structure which results in high cost of repair or replacement of non-structural elements. Restricting the large residual displacements also helps in avoiding the pounding effect. From the results discussed above, it has been observed that the effect of sliding bearing with and without nonlinear spring does not differ much. However there is a large reduction in the residual displacement in all the hazards levels considered for the study. The range of reduction in residual displacement when compared with sliding bearing without spring are 74% to 76% for hazard level of 2% in 50 years,

40% to 60% for hazard level of 10% in 50 years and 54% to 60 % for hazard level of 50% in 50 years. Therefore the non-linear spring is found to be very effective for this factor. Thus the large reduction in the residual displacement of the structure due to the incorporation of nonlinear springs in the sliding bearing systems depicts its importance.
Table 2. Peak maximum residual displacement at different hazard level for different base condition
Comparison of maximum residual displacement 10% in 50 years (La01-La20) Coefficient of friction()=0.05 Mean of peak base displacement 0.149 0.054 Mean+SD of peak base displacement 0.269 0.106 2% in 50 years (La21-La40) Mean of peak base displacement 0.478 0.123 Mean+SD of peak base displacement 0.887 0.215 50% in 50 years (La41-La60) Mean peak interstorey drift (%) 0.082 0.041 Mean+SD of peak base displacement 0.205 0.093

SI_no spring SI_with spring

Base Displacement- The comparison of the base displacement at different hazard levels shows reduction in displacement for the non-linear spring as compared with the case without nonlinear spring with sliding bearing. The trend is same as that obtained for residual displacement. However the % of reduction is much less here for all the three hazard level.
Table 3. Peak maximum base displacement at different hazard level for different base condition
Comparison of maximum base displacement 10% in 50 years (La01-La20) Mean of peak base displacement 0.327 0.194 Means + SD of peak base displacement 0.459 0.329 2% in 50 years (La21-La40) Mean of peak base displacement 0.774 0.725 Mean + SD of peak base displacement 1.158 1.121 50% in 50 years (La41-La60) Mean peak inter-storey drift (%) 0.136 0.118 Mean + SD of peak base displacement 0.249 0.200

Coefficient of friction ()=0.05

SI_no spring SI_with spring

Table 4. %reduction in the response by the provision of non-linear spring

% decrement in the residual displacement and maximum base displacement considering non-linear spring along with sliding bearing with respect to the base with only sliding bearing 10% in 50 years (La01-La20) Residual displacement Base displacement 62% 35% 2% in 50 years (La21-La40) 75% 5% 50% in 50 years (La41-La60) 52% 16%

Conclusion

In this paper, the seismic performance of a steel moment-resisting frame structure resting on sliding type of bearing with restoring force device as a conical non-linear spring is studied. The results showed that the structure with fixed base is subjected to huge peak inter-storey drift outside the allowable range that needed to be checked. The provision of sliding isolator is effective in reducing inter storey drift. However it results into a large amount of residual and base displacement. The provision of a properly designed non-linear spring with a very small stiffness at the beginning is found to be very effective in reducing residual displacement to a great extent. The reduction in base displacement is also obtained at a lesser extent. The peak storey drift also reduced to a very small extent by the provision of this kind of spring. The proposed isolation system, if optimized for various target performance levels, will result in a cost-effective solution.

References
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