Seismic Responses of a Building Isolated With Multiple Friction Pendulum System Subjected to Multi-Directional Excitations

In order to prevent a building from earthquake damage, a base isolation system called the multiple friction pendulum system (MFPS) which has numerous concave sliding interfaces is proposed to isolate a building from its foundation. Mathematical formulations have been derived to simulate the characteristic of the MFPS isolation system subjected to multi-directional excitations. By virtue of the derived mathematical formulations, the phenomena of the sliding motions of the MFPS isolator with several concave sliding interfaces under multi-directional earthquakes can be clearly understood. Also, numerical analyses of a building isolated with the MFPS isolator with several sliding interfaces have been conducted in this study to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed system in seismic mitigation. It has been proved through numerical analyses that structural responses have been reduced significantly and that the proposed system is a good tool to insure the safety of structures during earthquakes.