Sustainable and Low Cost Room Seismic Isolation for Essential Care Units of Hospitals in Developing Countries

Abstract eng:
Historical and recent earthquakes have shown repeatedly that developing countries in South America suffer devastating effects. The use of modern building codes can limit damage to structures but non-structural elements and essential equipment in buildings remain at risk. In critical structures such as hospitals, sub-par performance of non-structural systems can lead to consequences as devastating as structural failures. For example, hospitals can lose their basic functionality, leading to dangerous conditions for their patients, and equally important is that they may not be able to provide urgently needed medical care to earthquake victims, just when medical care is needed most. Passive seismic protection systems, such as base isolation, provide a good means of controlling the demand imposed by earthquake events. Base isolation systems have become quite common in developed countries like Japan, primarily due to their rapid development after the M7.2 Kobe earthquake in 1995. However, there are far fewer applications in developing countries due to economic considerations and other factors. The slow adoption of these protective systems in developing countries has provided the motivation for an innovative design in this project that uses cost-effective, recycled material, i.e. recycled tires, for isolating designated floors or rooms in health care facilities. There is a global need to develop safety standards for an economically viable protective system that can be implemented within new or existing structures to reduce the dynamic response and increase the performance of structures and their contents so that the overall risk is lowered. The proposed system differs from what has been identified in the existing literature, since half of an entire tire is used and is configured to have adequate stability. It is difficult to define a rubber tire analytically because of its complex geometry and material nonlinearities. In this study, analyses were performed in detail using numerical methods. These analyses were used for comparison with experimental data from individual tire cyclic tests in order to obtain their mechanical properties, specifically stiffness and damping characteristics. The numerical and experimental validation of a complete prototype system have been performed. The proposed seismic protective system is intended for high functional value locations, such as hospital operating rooms and intensive care units, where the seismic risk imparts significant consequences on the functionality of the hospital during and in the aftermath of an earthquake event.

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