Uplift-Restraint All-Cover Conical Friction Isolation System: Numerical Study

An innovative uplift-restraint all-cover conical friction isolation system (UACFS) is proposed, which is an enhancement of the original conical-concave friction isolation system. Compared to conventional isolation techniques, this novel seismic isolator has some distinct features, namely: 1. Variable frequency, which enables it to dodge resonant-like phenomenon during near-fault earthquakes; 2. All-cover of the sliding surface, this can make the apparatus more durable in long-term serviceability. In order to testify its seismic isolation performance, a series of numerical simulation are carried out on this isolation system, with state-space method employed in the analysis. In total 36 scenarios are analyzed in the numerical simulation. The numerical results show that this newly-proposed isolation equipment can provide significant seismic isolation performance while maintaining environmental robustness.