Date of Award
8-1-2011
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Civil Engineering
First Advisor
Tezcan, Jale
Abstract
Base isolation has been widely used to reduce the risk caused by horizontal ground motion during an earthquake. Base isolation works well to reduce the risk of a seismic event because it increases the structures natural period of vibration thus reducing the horizontal acceleration transmitted to the structure. However, research conducted in recent years showed that it is also important to include the vertical component of acceleration when designing base isolated structures. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the effect that the vertical component of acceleration has on base isolated structures by investigating the impact of vertical acceleration on the isolator stiffness, structural response and isolator displacement. A time history analysis showed that vertical acceleration has a limited effect on the isolator stiffness. The results indicated that the effect of vertical acceleration is primarily limited to a small increase in axial force on the isolator. Lastly the results showed that vertical acceleration has no impact on isolator displacement.
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