Castellano, Maria Gabriella

Seismic Isolation of Buildings in Chile Through Pendulum Isolators

Abstract eng:
The use of pendulum isolators in Chile is more recent than that of elastomeric isolators. In the last years, since 2011, two commercial/office buildings have been seismically isolated through pendulum isolators. These two buildings are located in Santiago, thus the seismicity is similar, with PGA of 0.4. The building Nueva La Dehesa is an office building of more than 25.000 m2, with some commercial activities in the first two floors. The building has 8 floors and 4 underground floors for parking. The isolators are located just below the ground level, on top of the columns. The project consists also in an identical building that has no protection system. The idea of this was to see the differences between a protected building and a non-protected one. The results after the last earthquake are clear, the non-protected building suffered several damages on the elevator shaft. The building couldn’t use elevators until a professional fixed them. Needless to say, damage like this can’t happen to buildings like hospitals, airports, and public departments, given the importance they have after seismic events. The Kennedy building is a commercial building located in one of the most exclusives areas of Santiago. Its protection system worked accordingly after the recent seismic events. This proves again the effectiveness of the technology. The design has been carried out through nonlinear time history analyses. The pendulum isolators for the two buildings were fabricated with Ultra-High Molecular Weight Poly-Ethylene (UHMW-PE) as sliding material. Such technology of pendulum isolators, developed in Europe, allows the isolators to sustain a large number of cycles without any damage on the sliding surface. The equivalent radius of curvature of the isolator is 3.1 m for the Kennedy building, and 3.7 m for the Nueva La Dehesa building. The design displacement is ranging from 250 mm to 350 mm. Type Tests have been carried out in the Seismic Response Modification Device Testing Laboratory of Caltrans at the University of California at San Diego, according to the Chilean Standard.

Contributors:

Godoy, Leopoldo Jaime Breschi

Conference Title:

Proceedings of the 16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

Conference Title:

16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

Conference Venue:

Santiago (CL)

Conference Dates:

2017-01-09 / 2017-01-13

Rights:

Text je chráněný podle autorského zákona č. 121/2000 Sb.