Seismic behaviour of seismically-isolated nonstructural components in multistory building structures

Abstract

In areas where the level of seismic activity is significant, acceleration demands on nonstructural components located at the upper floors of multistory building structures might be quite substantial, particularly if the natural period of the component is similar to one of the modal periods of the building. A possible approach to somehow reduce such levels of seismic accelerations consists of providing the nonstructural component with a base isolation system, which has certainly been shown to effectively reduce the seismic demands on certain types of building structures. The objective of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of the aforementioned approach. Preliminary results indicate that, contrary to what intuition suggests, base isolation systems do not always effectively reduce the acceleration demands, and that base isolation systems that are appropriate for nonstructural components located at the ground level are sometimes not appropriate for nonstructural components located at the upper floors of multistory building structures.