Abstract
This is a feasibility study of a new seismic base-isolation system with compressed silicon-rubber balls for light weight structures. This paper proposes the restoring force characteristics in the horizontal direction derived by the vibration test of the structure with the rubber ball bearing system. In addition to this, the long-term durability of the bearing balls is evaluated by accelerated aging tests. The experiment shows that the restoring force characteristics can be expressed by the Harding-Drinevich model in the case without consideration of aging effect, by adding the non-linear curve model to the HD model in the case with aging effect. Furthermore, the aging tests show that the silicon rubber ball bearing has high level of durability, comparing to that of the material rubber ball bearing. And this paper shows that the analysis results have good agreements to that conducted by the shaking table test for a full-scale model.
