Chapter 2

Vibration Isolation

Introduction
The theory of seismic isolation has many features in common with the better known
theory of vibration isolation, but there are some distinct differences between them;
these are mainly associated with the degree to which the vibrational disturbance is
known and the amplitude of the displacements in the support system.
The isolation of equipment from vibration via antivibration mounts is a well-
established technology and the theory and practice are covered in several books,
papers and reviews, of which the survey by Snowden [1] is an example. It is gener-
ally the isolated machine that is the source of the unwanted vibrations, but the pro-
cedure can be used to protect a sensitive piece of equipment or an entire building
from external sources of vibration. The use of vibration isolation for entire buildings
appears to have been started in the UK and is now well accepted in Europe. The first
building in the world to be isolated from low-frequency ground-borne vibration via
natural rubber was an apartment block over the underground railway at St. James's
Park in London. This building was completed in 1966. Since that time, an increasing
shortage of land in urban areas has led to the construction of hundreds of structures
on laminated rubber bearings all over the world. Details of this method of building
construction have been published, for example, by Grootenhuis [2] and by Crockett
[3].
The predominant disturbance to a building by rail traffic is a vertical ground
motion with frequencies that range from 25 Hz to 50 Hz, depending on the local soil
conditions and the source. To achieve a degree of attenuation which takes the dis-
turbance below the threshold of perception or below the level which will interfere
with the operation of delicate equipment, such as an electron microscope, the rubber
bearings are designed to provide a vertical natural frequency for the structure at
about one-third of the lowest frequency of the disturbance.
A recent example of the use of vibration isolation for buildings is the new concert
hall in Birmingham, UK, for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The
hall was officially opened on 12 April 1991. The entire 400000-tonne building is
mounted on rubber isolators to prevent the transmission of vibration from an adja-
cent main railway line. This technology for reducing ground-borne noise in build-
ings has not yet been accepted in the USA, but with the increasing use of land near

J. M. Kelly, Earthquake-Resistant Design with Rubber

© Springer-Verlag London Limited 1993
12 Vibration Isolation

railway lines and the increasing number of light rail, subway systems, or other steel
rail transit systems in urban areas, it could become quite generally adopted in the
USA and might otTer a substantial new market for natural rubber.

Theory of Vibration Isolation

The simplest isolation system is one where a mass, M, is supported by a linear

rubber-like material in the form of a mount. The object is assumed to be supported
at its center of gravity so that it vibrates in only one direction. The disturbance can
be treated as external, for example a sinusoidally varying ground displacement, u.,
or internal, by a sinusoidal force, F(t), applied to the mass itself as shown in Fig. 2.1.
In the first case, protection of the mass from vibration is required and we define the
transmissibility, T, as the ratio of the peak of the absolute displacement of the mass
to the peak of the ground displacement. In the second case, it is the protection of the
surrounding environment from the vibration of the mass that is required and in this
case the transmissibility is defined to be the ratio of the peak of the applied force,
F(t), to the peak of the reaction force, R(t), at the base of the mount. The input
ground motion or applied force are taken to be
u
• = U•e'rllf or F = Fe iOJt
and the displacement or reaction as
x = xeiOJt or R = ReiOJt
Here ro is the frequency of the disturbance and the tilde () above a symbol signifies
the peak value.

x
M

k
R

~~~~~~:?', FJgUI'e 2.1 Two equivalent forms of the vibration isolation system.