Response of Rubber-Soil Mixture Subjected To Cyclic Loading

Abstract eng:
Typically, base isolators are placed within the building structure for passive vibration control in earthquake prone areas. An economical version of base isolation can be achieved by using natural seismic isolators such as sand placed beneath the foundation. However due to the scarcity of sand and its inability to recover from the deformations suffered during an earthquake, natural seismic isolator made of soil- tyre mixture could potentially be a better solution. This will also serve as a sustainable solution for the recycling of scrap tyres. To find the suitability of soil-tyre mixture as an effective seismic isolator, a series of strain-controlled cyclic triaxial tests were performed on sand specimens compacted with different percentage of tyre content (0%, 30%, 50% and100%) at a confining pressure of 100 kPa. The results of cyclic triaxil tests shows decrease in the shear modulus values and increase in the hysteretic damping values of sand with the increase in tyre content. To demonstrate the effective use of sand-tyre mixture as an isolating base layer for buildings, the seismic response of a typical isolated footing embedded in sand-tyre mixture isolator (30% tyre content) was studied using a 3D finite element code ABAQUS. Sand and sand-tyre mixture isolator are modeled as visco-elastic materials. The foundation-isolating layersoil system was subjected to 1978 Miyagiken Oki earthquake time history of acceleration. It is found that the isolating layer with a thickness of two times the width of footing reduces the peak spectral acceleration by about 40% indicating the promising use of sand-tyre mixture as an isolating base layer for earthquake resistant design of low-rise buildings.

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