Development of rolling-type parabolic-surface floor isolator (RPFI) and determination of mechanical properties

Date

2026-1

Author

Aslan, Cem Eren

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

93
views

0
downloads

Cite This

Acceleration demand acting on non-structural components in buildings can exceed permitted limits and result in significant financial losses. Facilities such as data centers, museums, power transmission systems, and high-technology buildings are particularly vulnerable due to the presence of highly sensitive and costly equipment, often exceeding the value of the structural system itself. Although seismic base isolation is widely adopted to mitigate structural damage, it has been demonstrated that floor-level accelerations in base-isolated buildings may still exceed acceptable limits, resulting in loss of functionality of critical non-structural components. Consequently, further reduction of accelerations transmitted to such elements is of paramount importance. Floor isolation systems provide an effective supplementary strategy to address this challenge. However, existing rolling-type floor isolators reported in the literature are predominantly limited to spherical or conical surface geometries. In this study, a novel rolling-type floor isolator incorporating a parabolic surface geometry is proposed, exploiting the inherent advantages of parabolic profiles in seismic response control. An analytical model of the proposed system was first developed, and the corresponding equation of motion were derived and solved. Based on the analytical findings, two distinct prototypes were designed, fabricated, and tested. The experimental results demonstrate that the developed rolling-type parabolic-surface floor isolator (RPFI) is capable of reducing the accelerations transmitted to non-structural elements by up to 90%. These findings confirm that the proposed floor isolator significantly mitigates seismic demands on non-structural components.

Subject Keywords

Floor isolation, Seismic isolation, Acceleration reduction, Seismic protection, Parabolic surface isolator

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/118417

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis