NEHRP Clearinghouse

Title
Effects of Protective Cushion and Soil Compliancy on the Response of Equipment within a Seismically Excited Building.
File
PB89207179.pdf
Author(s)
HoLung, J. A.
Source
National Science Foundation, Washington, DC., February 16, 1989, 74 p.
Identifying Number(s)
NCEER-89-0001
Abstract
A protective cushion is shown to be effective for reducing seismically induced response of a piece of equipment, such as a computer, installed in a building. The cushioning device is assumed to be linearly viscoelastic in the analysis and the compliancy of the soil under the building is taken into consideration. The input earthquake excitation is modelled as a nonstationary random process. Since the building is generally a dynamic system of many degrees of freedom, approximate procedures are used in which only a limited number of important modes is included in calculating the equipment response. Guidelines for choosing such important modes are given, and the approximate results are compared with mathematically exact results in numerical examples.
Keywords
Protectors; Random processes; Secondary systems; Cushions; Buildings; Earthquake engineering; Soil compliancy; Soil structure interactions; Equipment; Seismic effects; Viscoelasticity