BEHAVIOUR OF BASE ISOLATED MASONRY BUILDINGS

Abstract

The concept of reducing the damaging effects on structures during earthquake by introducing a support system that isolates the structure from the ground motion is a well established method, named as base isolation technique. The isolation system reduces the damaging effects of an earthquake by essentially isolating the superstructure and its contents from potentially damaging ground motion. In case of base isolated system the behaviour of system mainly depends on type of base isolators and their contact with the superstructure and substructure. Nonlinear contact analysis has been performed between the points on one surface relative to lines or areas of another surface to simulate a base isolated behaviour. A single storey building is considered here and two models have been analyzed for fixed base (without base isolation) and sliding base (with base isolation) conditions using contact analysis in ANSYS. The linear and nonlinear time history analysis has been performed on single storey masonry building, which is modelled and analysed using ANSYS. The analytical results obtained have been found to be in conformity with experimental studies conducted earlier.