Abstract Summary
Seismic isolation, which at first used only for special applications, is nowadays gaining increased popularity in the field of protecting existing structures from seismic loading and it even constitutes one of the standard methods for seismic upgrade. This method can be achieved with various devices, with elastomeric bearings being the most commonly used. The main drawback of these devices is that they permit large horizontal displacements in every direction. An effective approach to mitigate these responses under earthquake events is an advanced negative stiffness damped system, termed as KDamper, which its dynamic performance has been demonstrated in recent studies. In this paper, an extension of the initial device, the EKDamper, is presented. The structural form and its negative stiffness mechanism are introduced with special emphasis placed on its dimensioning and its indicative design. More specifically, for a reference SDOF system with a mass of 1tn, the components of the EKDamper are realistically designed and a detailed assembly of the device is presented. The final model proves that the proposed device is realistic and within reasonable technological capabilities. To verify and evaluate the feasibility of this device, a numerical case study is also conducted on the SDOF system subjected to 30 artificial accelerograms. The results and the comparison with conventional and high damped elastomeric isolators demonstrate that the EKDamper can reduce both structural displacements and accelerations, proving its effectiveness and superiority over the other isolation techniques.
