Anti-Seismic Systems: Worldwide Application and Conditions for Their Correct Use

Abstract eng:
The number of structures protected by new anti-seismic systems is increasing all over in the world. As a matter of fact, the number of applications, for both new constructions and retrofits, got up remarkably in the last years, so that a complete list of them is impossible to do in practice nowadays. Based on information provided at the ASSISi 13th and 14th conferences (held in September 2013 in Sendai, and in September 2015 in San Diego, respectively) and further information received by the Authors, in 2014 more than 24,000 structures, located in over 30 countries, were protected by passive anti-seismic systems, mainly by the seismic isolation and energy dissipation devices. New technologies had been first used for strategic and relevant structures, for which a higher level of safety is required, while the additional cost, determined by their use, limited the application to residential buildings. This happened, for example, in California, while in Japan the additional cost was accepted by people, who have a high level of perception of the seismic risk, also related to the very frequent strong earthquakes. In other countries, such as Italy, where the new technologies were considered later in the technical codes, their use has been encouraged by allowing the reduction of the seismic actions in the structure protected by new anti-seismic technologies. Anyway, this concept requires a particular care when designing structures with new anti-seismic devices and during their installation, but also a suitable maintenance plan. In this paper a selected list of the main applications of seismic isolation in the world are presented, mainly with reference to new strategic and relevant structures but also to high risk plants and to existing and to cuktural heritage structures. The suitability of seismic isolation for the protection of structures against earthquakes is demonstrated by the actual behaviour of base isolated buildings and bridges during stroing earthquakes, among these the seismic sequence that interested Central Italy since August 24th, 2016.

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