10th World Conference on Seismic Isolation, Energy Dissipation and Active Vibrations

Control of Structures, Istanbul, Turkey, May 28-31, 2007

SEISMIC ISOLATION FOR SOFT-STORY BUILDINGS

Seval Pinarbasi1, Dimitrios Konstantinidis2, James M. Kelly2

1
Earthquake Engineering Research Center, Middle East Technical University, Ankara 06531, Turkey
2
Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California at Berkeley, CA 94804, USA

ABSTRACT

Reconnaissance reports following strong earthquakes time and again point to the widespread
damage caused to buildings with soft stories. This study is motivated by the need to provide
mitigation strategies for these types of structures. There exists a general belief among
practicing engineers that seismic isolation can only be effective in reducing the seismic
demand for regular, uniformly stiff buildings but not for soft-story buildings since it is
thought that the flexibility of the soft story deems the isolation ineffective. This paper
present results from an extensive numerical investigation that dispels this misconception. It
looks at the results of modal and nonlinear time-history analyses conducted on simplified
models of a hypothetical five-story reinforced concrete building with a soft ground story to
draw conclusions on the efficiency of seismic isolation as the flexibility of the soft story is
increased. Comparison is made with how soft-story flexibility affects the corresponding
fixed-base building. Practical ways, if necessary, for increasing the efficiency of the
technique is also examined, showing that it benefits greatly by stiffening the soft story.
Success of the linear theory developed for base-isolated structures in predicting the basic
response parameters (both modal and seismic) when the structure has a soft ground story is
also assessed. The paper confirms that seismic isolation can be used as a viable mitigation
technique for soft-story buildings.

1. INTRODUCTION

Reconnaissance reports following strong earthquakes time and again point to the widespread
damage caused to buildings with soft stories (Figure 1). The columns of such buildings are
not capable of coping with the large ductility demands imposed on them by strong
earthquakes, leading to severe damage (Figure 1a), which often results in collapse (Figure
1c) of the structure due to the formation of a sway mechanism (Figure 1b). This study is
motivated by the need to provide mitigation strategies for these types of structures.
There exists a general belief among practicing engineers that seismic isolation can only
be effective in reducing the seismic demand for regular, uniformly stiff buildings but not for
soft-story buildings. Engineers are reluctant to use seismic isolation for multi-story buildings
with a soft ground floor because they are concerned that the flexibility of the soft story will
deem the isolation ineffective, and the soft-story level will still experience large ductility
 a. column hinging b. soft-story sway mechanism

c. soft-story collapse

Figure 1 Soft-story behavior (Photo courtesy NISEE website, University of California, Berkeley)

demands that can result in its collapse. Recognizing that there is a large number of soft-story
buildings worldwide, this paper investigates to what extend the behavior of an isolated
building is effected by the presence of a soft story by using a hypothetical five-story
reinforced concrete building with a soft story on the ground level, and examined practical
ways, if necessary, for increasing the efficiency of the technique.

2. MODELING AND ANALYSIS DETAILS

To accomplish the objectives of the study, a hypothetical five-story reinforced concrete

structure is designed. To focus primarily on the effects of the soft story, the building design is
kept as simple as possible (Figure 2a). The soft story is assumed to exist only due to the
presence of a ground floor whose height is larger than the others. That is, no irregularity is
assumed on the distribution of partition walls over the buildings height, eliminating the
difficulties associated with modeling the partition walls. The height of the upper stories is
assumed to be constant and equal to h0=3 m, while the height of the ground floor, hsoft, is
incrementally increased from h0 to 2h0, by considering four hsoft values: 3, 4, 5 and 6 m.
Since the study mainly focuses on retrofitting an existing building, the member sizes for the
structural elements (beams: 0.600.35 m, columns: 0.500.50 m) are typical of existing
 0.522mo
ho=3 m

mo
ho=3 m

mo
ho=3 m

ho=3 m mo

mo
hsoft=3-6 m

0.784mo

(mo=81.2 kNsec2/m)
5m 3m 5m

a. simplified 2-D model b. mass distribution over the height

Figure 2 Modeling of a hypothetical base-isolated building with a soft ground story

structures in Turkey. The loads applied to the building and the seismic masses lumped at the
geometric centers of each floor (Figure 2b) are calculated using the Turkish Standards TS498
(TSI 1997) and the Turkish Earthquake Code (MPWS 1998).
Two types of analysis are conducted on each model by using the structural analysis
program SAP2000 (CSI 2003): Modal Analysis (MA) and Nonlinear Time History Analysis
(NTHA). The periods, Ti, mode shapes, i, and participating mass ratios, i, for each model
are determined through the modal analysis. Although the main objective is to investigate the
behavior of the Base-Isolated (BI) building, the effects of the soft story on the modal
parameters of the building when it is Fixed-Base (FB) are also investigated to evaluate the
efficiency of the seismic isolation technique when used in soft-story buildings. Modal
parameters determined for the FB building are also used to assess the success of the
approximate theory developed for the analysis of a Multi-Degree-of-Freedom (MDOF) BI
system (Kelly 1997) in predicting the modal parameters of the BI building.
After determining the modal parameters, the seismic behavior of each BI model is studied
by conducting NTHA with the Sylmar County Hospital Parking Lot (0-deg) motion recorded
during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. Figure 3 plots the acceleration history of the record
and the elastic response spectrum for 5% damping. The response of each model to the
applied seismic excitation is characterized in terms of (i) maximum (absolute) floor
accelerations, i,max (i: b and 1-5; b stands for base), in particular maximum top floor
acceleration, 5,max; (ii) maximum interstory drifts as a percentage of the story height, drij,max
(i: b and 1-4; j: 1-5), in particular maximum soft-story drift, drb1,max; (iii) maximum base
shear coefficient, Cs,max; and (iv) maximum bearing displacement, b,max.
In all models, the behavior of the superstructure is assumed to remain linear, which can be
considered as a fairly realistic assumption for BI structures. On the other hand, the nonlinear
 1.0 3
Ground Acceleration (g)

Spectra Acceleration (g)

0.5
2
0.0
1
-0.5

-1.0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 1 2 3
Time (second) Period (second)

a. acceleration time history b. elastic response spectrum for 5% damping

Figure 3 Seismic excitation applied to the models: Sylmar record

nature of the behavior of the isolators assumed to be lead rubber bearings is included in
the models using NONLINK elements (CSI 2003) which requires the input of the three basic
parameters for bilinear modeling of the bearings: initial stiffness, K1, yield strength, Fy, and
post-yield-to-initial-stiffness ratio, K2/K1.
Bearings are designed for an isolation period of Tb=2.5 sec, which leads to an effective
horizontal stiffness of (KH)eff=670 kN/m for identical bearings. It is to be noted that the
program uses this value of stiffness in modal analysis of the BI models. Since there are no
specifications for seismic design of BI structures in Turkey, the design displacement and
other calculations for the bearings in this study are per IBC2000 (ICC 2000). Assuming that
the studied building is located near an active fault, a relatively high value is used for SD1
(=1.2). It is worth noting that the assumed values for the geometrical and material properties
of the bearings (shape factor, S=20; thickness of steel plates, ts=2 mm; effective damping,
b=10%; shear modulus, G=0.35 MPa; bulk modulus, K=2000 MPa and yield stress of lead,
p=6.9 MPa) are all typical values quoted in literature (Kelly 1997, Naeim and Kelly 1999).
Consequently, the bilinear properties of the bearings are determined as K1=5622 kN/m and
Fy=74 kN by assuming K2/K1=0.1, which is also typical.

3. EFFECT OF SOFT STORY ON EFFICIENCY OF SEISMIC ISOLATION

Table 1 summarizes the modal periods and participating mass ratios for all studied models.
Similarly, the effect of the soft story on the fundamental mode shapes of the building
normalized to 5 = ( hsoft + 4h0 ) /(5h0 ) is shown in Figure 4.
From Table 1, it is seen that doubling hsoft almost doubles T1 in the FB building. Similarly,
1 increases as hsoft increases. For hsoft4 m, 190%. Also, Figure 4a indicates that
concentration of displacements at the soft-story level reduces interstory drifts at the upper
stories in the FB models. It can also be deduced from Figure 3b that increase in period due to
the existence of soft ground story is accompanied with decrease in both base shear and floor
accelerations. It may therefore appear that the presence of a soft story in the FB building is
beneficial. Indeed, having a soft layer at the base of the building resembles having a kind of
Table 1 Modal periods (Ti in seconds) and participating mass ratios (i) for FB and BI models with
different soft story heights (hsoft)

FB BI
Mode
hsoft=3 hsoft=4 hsoft=5 hsoft=6 hsoft=3 hsoft=4 hsoft=5 hsoft=6
(i)
Ti i Ti i Ti i Ti i Ti i Ti i Ti i Ti i
0 - - - - - - - - 2.57 1.00 2.60 1.00 2.63 1.00 2.68 1.00
1 0.55 0.85 0.64 0.92 0.76 0.96 0.91 0.98 0.29 0.00 0.30 0.00 0.31 0.00 0.33 0.00
2 0.18 0.10 0.20 0.07 0.22 0.04 0.24 0.02 0.14 0.00 0.16 0.00 0.18 0.00 0.21 0.00
3 0.11 0.03 0.12 0.01 0.12 0.00 0.12 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.11 0.00 0.12 0.00 0.12 0.00
4 0.08 0.01 0.08 0.00 0.08 0.00 0.08 0.00 0.07 0.00 0.08 0.00 0.08 0.00 0.08 0.00
5 0.07 0.00 0.07 0.00 0.07 0.00 0.07 0.00 0.06 0.00 0.07 0.00 0.07 0.00 0.07 0.00

isolation system at that level and therefore brings all benefits of seismic isolation. However,
unlike seismic isolation bearings, which can accommodate very large lateral deformations
with ease, lateral load resisting elements (reinforced concrete columns in this study) at the
soft-story level cannot accommodate large drifts imposed on them (Figure 1).
The effect of the soft story on the modal parameters of the BI building is somewhat
different from its effect on the FB building. Table 1 indicates that hsoft has almost no effect on
the fundamental period of the BI building, T0. This is also the case for the fundamental mode
shapes (Figure 4b). The participating mass ratio in the fundamental mode, 0, is about 100%
even when hsoft=2h0, indicating the efficiency of base isolation. Thus, the results of modal
analysis clearly indicate that hsoft has almost no effect on the overall response of the BI
building, yet we are still interested in examining if base-isolating a soft-story building would
alleviate (and if so, how much) the large seismic demand at the soft-story level.
Table 2 summarizes the predictions of NTHA for the peak values of the main response

20 20
h=3 h=3
h=4 h=4
15 15
Story Height (m)
Story Height (m)

h=5 h=5
h=6 h=6
10 10

5 5

0 0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2
Modal Displacement Modal Displacement

a. FB building b. BI building

Figure 4 Effect of soft story on fundamental mode shapes (h: soft story height in m)
 Table 2 Peak response parameters obtained by NTHA

Cs,max (g) b,max (m) 5,max (g) drb1,max (%)

i hsoft (m)
Cs,i Cs,i/Cs,0 b,i b,i /b,0 5,i 5,i/5,0 drb1,i drb1,i/drb1,0

0 3 0.34 1.00 0.51 1.00 0.44 1.00 0.35 1.0

1 4 0.34 1.00 0.51 1.00 0.40 0.91 0.55 1.55
2 5 0.34 1.00 0.51 1.00 0.47 1.05 0.79 2.21
3 6 0.34 1.00 0.51 1.00 0.56 1.26 1.06 3.00

quantities for the BI models. Since T0 is not affected significantly by the existence of the soft
story, the maximum base shear is insensitive to changes in hsoft; so is the maximum isolator
displacement. Typical hysteresis loops for the isolators are presented in Figure 5a. While the
maximum top-floor acceleration tends to increase with increasing hsoft, this effect is not so
pronounced. The major adverse effect of the soft story on seismic behavior of the BI
building is to increase the soft-story drift percent. Doubling hsoft causes a threefold increase
in drb1,max.
Besides the basic peak-response parameters, it is valuable to study the effect of the soft
story on the maximum story displacements, interstory drifts over the height of the building
and floor accelerations (Figure 5b-d). Since the fundamental mode governs the seismic
behavior of the BI building, the displacement pattern in Figure 5b is very similar to the
fundamental mode shape. The presence of the soft story slightly increases the displacements
of the upper floors. In fact, this increase is mainly due to the increased displacements at the
soft-story level; the deformed shape of the superstructure above the soft-story level remains
almost the same in all BI cases (Figure 4b). This can also be seen in Figure 5c; upper story
drifts are almost independent of hsoft. The effectiveness of seismic isolation, even when used
in a soft-story building, is also apparent from the floor accelerations in Figure 5d. The
presence of the soft story has almost no effect on the maximum floor accelerations in the
superstructure. The distribution of floor accelerations is basically uniform over the height.
However, changing the soft-story height seems to have considerable effect on the base
acceleration; doubling hsoft almost doubles b,max.
At this stage, it can be valuable to make a brief assessment of the effectiveness of seismic
isolation when used in a soft-story building by comparing the results obtained for the BI and
FB buildings. We limit the discussion to the maximum soft-story drift since this is by far the
most important demand parameter for a soft-story building. We point out that the
fundamental periods of all models in this study (FB and BI) lie in the displacement preserved
range of the response spectrum. Therefore even if the FB structure yields, the displacements
are about the same regardless of whether the system yields or not. This is the typical
approach in design whereby the displacements of the structure are those resulting from
elastic analysis, while the forces are computed by dividing the elastic forces by a reduction
factor, R (e.g., FEMA 2000). Analysis results indicate that, for hsoft FB
= hsoft
BI
= 2h0 ,
drb1,max = 2.22% and drb1,max = 1.05% , while for hsoft = hsoft = h0 , drb1,max = 1.02% and
FB BI FB BI FB

BI
drb1,max = 0.35% . From the comparison of the drift values, it can be recognized that the
efficiency of the isolation technique does decrease as hsoft increases (BI reduces drb1,max to
FB
34% of drb1,max FB
for hsoft = hsoft
BI
= h0 ; 47% for hsoft
FB
= hsoft
BI
= 2h0 ), yet the maximum soft-story
 400 20
Bearing Shear Force (kN)

hsoft=5 m h=3
h=4

Story Height (m)

200 15
h=5
h=6
0 10

-200 5

-400 0
-0.6 -0.3 0 0.3 0.6 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25
Bearing Displacement (m) Story Displacements wrt base (m)

a. typical hysteresis loops for bearings b. maximum superstructural

2.5 20
h=3
Interstory Drift (%)

2.0
Story Height (m)
h=4 15
h=5
1.5
h=6 10
h=3
1.0
h=4
5
0.5 h=5
h=6
0.0 0
5-4 4-3 3-2 2-1 1-b 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
Story Numbers Floor Accelerations (g)

c. maximum interstory drifts d. maximum floor accelerations

Figure 5 Effect of soft story on seismic behavior of the BI building (h: soft story height in m)

drift in the BI building for even the worst soft-story scenario is almost equal to that of the FB
building without a soft story.

4. EFFECT OF SOFT STORY STIFFENING ON EFFECTIVENESS OF

SEISMIC ISOLATION

It can be inferred from the previous section that seismic isolation could serve as a successful
retrofit scheme for a structure with a soft story. Analysis results show that flexibility of the
superstructure can influence the efficiency of the technique to some extent. Still, it is
possible to benefit from all advantages of the technique. This can be done by stiffening the
soft story. For this purpose, any of the retrofitting techniques proposed for FB buildings,
such as stiffening the columns (by steel jacketing, CFRP wrapping, etc.) or adding steel
braces/frames in the openings at the soft-story level (if that is an agreeable option) can be
used. Then, there arises an important question: how much should the stiffness of the soft
story be increased so that the adverse effects of the soft story on the efficiency of seismic
isolation are eliminated or considerably reduced?
 1.2

1.0

Soft Story Drift (%)

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Increase in Stiffness of Soft Story (times original)

Figure 6 Effect of soft story stiffening on soft story drift in the BI model with hsoft=2h0

In this section, a case study is conducted on the BI model with hsoft=2h0 to investigate the
effect of soft-story stiffening on the effectiveness of seismic isolation. Assuming that steel
jacketing or CFRP warping is used to stiffen the soft-story columns, Figure 6 shows the
effect of soft-story stiffening on the soft-story drift. As expected, stiffening the soft story
decreases the soft-story drift. What is more striking is the efficiency of soft-story stiffening
on decreasing the undesirable effects of the soft story. Increasing the stiffness by four times
causes a reduction of more than 75 % in the soft story drift. If the behavior of the original BI
model with hsoft=h0 is taken as the target behavior, to reduce the soft-story drift to the target
value, the stiffness of the soft story must be increased eight times. This is compatible with
the fact that doubling the soft-story height reduces the column stiffness by eight times.
However, for the studied case, it seems to be sufficient to increase the soft-story stiffness
four times, rather than eight, since almost all adverse effect of the soft story will be
eliminated with this amount of stiffening.

5. PREDICTIONS OF THE LINEAR THEORY DEVELOPED FOR BASE

ISOLATED STRUCTURES

The linear theory developed for the approximate analysis of BI structures (Kelly 1997),
reviewed very shortly in the Appendix, is usually very practical for the design of BI
structures, at least in the initial stage. In this section, basic response parameters (both modal
and seismic) are computed using this approximate theory, and the results are compared to the
SAP2000 results in order to assess its accuracy.
The predictions of the approximate theory for the modal frequencies of the BI models
with hsoft=5 and 6 m are listed in Table 3. The k* values, predicted by the analysis
developed for MDOF systems, are computed from Equations (A2) using the modal
parameters listed in Table 1 for the FB models (note that i = 2 / Ti ). Similarly, the
k*,2DOF values, predicted by the analysis developed for equivalent 2-DOF systems, are
computed from Equations (A4). The percent differences between the k* and k , SAP are
also listed in Table 3. Using Eqs. (A3), it is possible to predict the mode shapes of the BI
models. For the BI model with hsoft=5 m, the approximate mode shapes are computed using
the mode shapes not given here and frequencies of the FB model with hsoft=5m, and they
are plotted in Figure 7.

Table 3 Assessment of the accuracy of the approximate theory (Kelly 1997) developed for BI MDOF
and equivalent 2DOF systems in predicting modal frequencies of two BI models

Mode hsoft=5m hsoft=6m

(j) k,SAP *k % Diff *k,2DOF % Diff k,SAP *k % Diff *k,2DOF % Diff
0 2.39 2.41 0.9 2.42 1.2 2.34 2.36 0.7 2.36 0.7
1 20.22 19.83 -2.0 23.30 15.2 19.16 19.64 2.5 21.32 11.3
2 34.24 46.70 36.4 - - 29.67 33.01 11.3 - -
3 52.91 53.66 1.4 - - 51.37 51.67 0.6 - -
4 75.77 76.10 0.4 - - 75.09 75.28 0.3 - -
5 94.68 94.77 0.1 - - 94.50 94.54 0.0 - -

Mode 0, SAP Mode 0, Approx. Mode 2, SAP Mode 2, Approx.

Mode 3, SAP Mode 3, Approx.
Mode 1, SAP Mode 1, Approx.
Mode 4, SAP Mode 4, Approx.
20 20
Story Height (m)

Story Height (m)

15 15

10 10

5 5

0 0
-1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 -6 -3 0 3 6
Modal Displacement Modal Displacement

Figure 7 Assessment of the accuracy of the approximate theory (Kelly 1997) developed for BI MDOF
systems in predicting mode shapes of the BI model with hsoft=5 m

Table 4 Peak response parameters obtained by NTHA

hsoft Cs,max (g) b,max (m) drb1,max (%)

L1 1 1
(m) SAP 2DOF % Diff SAP 2DOF % Diff SAP 2DOF % Diff
3 0.29 0.77 0.048 0.34 0.33 3.5 0.51 0.60 -16.8 0.35 0.28 21.1
4 0.48 0.83 0.065 0.34 0.35 -2.6 0.51 0.60 -17.1 0.55 0.47 14.6
5 0.64 0.87 0.093 0.34 0.37 -7.8 0.51 0.59 -14.3 0.79 0.71 9.7
6 0.75 0.88 0.133 0.34 0.37 -7.8 0.51 0.58 -12.4 1.06 0.97 8.9
 From Table 3 and Figure 7, it can be seen that the approximate theory developed for BI
MDOF systems (using the effective stiffness of the isolators) predicts accurately the modal
parameters for all the modes except k=2. Also accurate are the predictions of the equivalent
2DOF system for the shifted isolation frequencies, though its predictions for the second
frequency deviate between 15.2% for hsoft=5 m and 11.3% for hsoft=6 m. Computing the
modal participation ratios using the approximate modal parameters, as with the exact, leads
to the observation that the fundamental mode dominates the response. Therefore, the
approximate theory can be used as a beneficial tool in predicting the modal parameters of a
BI building even when it has a soft ground story.
As discussed in Kelly (1997), it is also possible to approximate the main response
parameters for a BI building subjected to an earthquake excitation by using the equivalent
2DOF system approach. This approach is approximate in the sense that it is derived using
only the first mode of the corresponding FB building and that it uses linear stiffness and
damping for the bearings. The predictions of this approximate theory are computed using
Equations (A6) and presented in Table 4. It is noted that as hsoft increases, so do 1, L1 and 1.
This is to be expected from the definition of these quantities, given in the Appendix.
Qualitatively, 1 increases because the fundamental frequency of the FB building, 1 ,
decreases as hsoft increases. The quantities L1 and 1 increase because the corresponding FB
building behaves more like a single degree of freedom system (Table 1) with frequency
approaching the fundamental frequency of the FB building as hsoft increases. Note in Table 4
that even for the most severe soft-story case, 1 is not large. This explains why seismic
isolation is effective even in this case. From Table 4, it can also be seen that the predictions
of the approximate theory for the base shear deviate from the exact quantities (from
NTHA) by no more than 8%, at worst. On the other hand, the linear theory overestimates the
bearing displacement by as much as 17% and underestimates the soft-story drift by as much
as 21%. It is worth noting that the success of the approximate theory in predicting the
soft-story drift increases as hsoft increases.

6. CONCLUSIONS

The presence of a soft story makes it almost impossible for a building to survive a major
earthquake without having severe damage at this seismically vulnerable level. The collapse
of the entire structure is often inevitable due to the formation of a sway mechanism at the
soft-story level. Considering the huge number of soft-story buildings in seismic regions
around the world, it is crucial to evaluate and propose mitigation techniques for them. This
paper presents results of an extensive numerical parametric study which suggest that seismic
isolation, besides enhancing the overall performance of a soft-story building, is also effective
in particularly reducing the seismic demand (i.e., interstory drift) on the soft-story level,
which is the primary cause of catastrophic collapse in these types of buildings. As an
example, the nonlinear time history analyses conducted on simplified models of a
hypothetical five-story reinforced concrete building showed that the fixed-base (FB) building
without a soft story and the base-isolated (BI) building with a ground floor nearly 8 times as
BI
flexible ( hsoft = 2hsoft
FB
) as the FB ground floor produced nearly identical interstory drifts. For
hsoft = hsoft = h0 , the interstory drift of the FB building was 1.02%, about three times larger
BI FB

than that of the BI building. For the worst-case scenario examined in this study,
BI
hsoft = hsoft
FB
= 2h0 , the interstory drift of the FB building was 2.22%, more than twice that of
the BI building. In other words, contrary to the general belief, seismic isolation can be used
as an effective mitigation technique even for soft-story buildings. While the efficiency of
seismic isolation does decrease as the flexibility (i.e., height) of the soft story increases, the
reduction in seismic demand, particularly in soft-story drift, compared to the corresponding
FB building is still substantial. Recent studies that focus on the development of low-cost
isolators have shown that this mitigation technique could also be implemented in less
developed regions, which particularly suffer the loss of lives during strong earthquakes.
Analyses indicate that it is also possible to benefit from almost all advantages of the
technique using some stiffening at the soft-story level, which reduces most of the undesirable
effects of the soft story and improves the efficiency of seismic isolation.
It should be noted that this study has mainly aimed to examine the possibility of using
seismic isolation as a mitigation technique for soft-story buildings. It does not claim that the
results obtained from the analysis of the simplified models considered in this study using a
single earthquake record are applicable for every potential acceleration motion or for every
structural type or soil condition. As for the other mitigation techniques, seismic isolation
should be used only when the conditions permit it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study is partially supported by Turkish State Planning Organization Grant No:
BAP-08-11-DPT2002K120510.

APPENDIX: REVIEW OF THE LINEAR THEORY FOR BI BUILDINGS

To apply the linear theory developed for the analysis of a MDOF BI building (Kelly 1997), it
is necessary to know the mode shapes i and modal frequencies i , where i=1 to N, for
the corresponding FB building. If the mass matrix for the FB building is M, the modified
mass ratio for the BI building, i , can be computed from

i = L2i M i / ( m + mb ) where M i = ( i )T M i and Li = ( i )T Mr / M i (A1)

In Equation (A1), m is the total mass of the building above the isolation, mb is the mass of
the isolation system, and r is the influence vector. Then, the modal frequencies, k* , and
normalized mode shapes, k (where k=0 to N), for the BI building with an isolation
frequency b can be determined from:

0*2 = b2 1 i (b2 / i2 ) ,
N

i =1

k2
k*2 = 1
for k=1-N

i
1 k 1 (1 k ) (b2 / k2 )
N
(A2)

i =1 1 ( i / k ) (1 k )
2 2

i k
and
 T

qik = Lik*2 / (k*2 i2 )
N N
k = 1, qik1i , qik2i ,... where (A3)
i =1 i =1
As discussed in Kelly (1997), the displacements and forces in a MDOF BI building can
be estimated by applying the linear analysis developed for a 2-DOF BI model using the first
mode of the corresponding FB model. If the damping factors for the structure and isolation
system are denoted respectively as s and b, modal frequencies k*,2DOF and damping
factors k*,2DOF , where k=0-1, for the equivalent 2-DOF model can be computed from

0,2DOF
*2
= b2 (1 11 ) , 1,2DOF
*2
= 12 (1 + 11 ) / (1 1 ) where 1 = b2 / 12 (A4)

0,2DOF = b (1 1.5 11 ) 1,2DOF = ( s + 1 b11/ 2 ) / (1 1 )

* * 1/ 2
and (A5)

In the computation of basic response parameters, it is usually sufficient to consider only

the isolation mode. Then one can calculate, by using the response spectrum approach, the
peak values of bearing displacement b,max, superstructural displacements v max and base
shear coefficient CS,max, from the following expressions:

b,max = (1 11 ) S * / 0,2DOF
A
*2
, v max = 1 L1 (1 11 ) S * / 0,2DOF
A
*2
1 ,
(A6)
Cs ,max = 1 (1 + mb / m ) S *A

where S A* is determined from the pseudo-acceleration spectrum using 0,2DOF

*
and
T0,2DOF = 2 / 0,2DOF .
* *

REFERENCES

Computers and Structures Inc (CSI) (2003) SAP 2000 Nonlinear 8-2-3: Static and dynamic finite
element analysis of structures, Berkeley, California.
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