Assessment of a dual isolation system with base and vertical isolation of the upper portion

Base isolation is a widely used technique for the seismic control of structures as it reduces the structural seismic demand. However, displacement of the isolation layer is not economically feasible in congested urban areas. To resolve the issue, an innovative system is proposed here to isolate both horizontally at the base and vertically in the upper portion of the structure. A simplified linear three degree-of-freedom (3DOF) model of the system that considers the mass and stiffness ratios of the substructure has been introduced and analyzed in MATLAB by spectrum analysis. The 3DOF model results revealed that, when the period of the soft substructure reaches 2.5 times that of the stiff substructure, the isolation and the lower substructure responses decrease by 65% and 51%, respectively. Time-history analysis of a MDOF system at three frequency ratios under a wide range of ground motions indicated that, at the expense of accepting a certain large drift by the soft substructure in the upper portion of the structure, base isolation displacement can be decreased by 10%.