Seismic Base Isolation

Base isolation, also known as seismic base isolation or base isolation system,is one of the most popular means of protecting a structure against earthquake forces.It is a collection of structural elements which should substantially decouple a superstructure from its substructure resting on a shaking ground thus protecting a building or non-building structure's integrity.

 

Base isolation is one of the most powerful tools of earthquake engineering pertaining to the passive structural vibration control technologies. It is meant to enable a building or non-building structure to survive a potentially devastating seismic impact through a proper initial design or subsequent modifications. In some cases, application of base isolation can raise both a structure's seismic performance and its seismic sustainability considerably. 

 

Base isolation system consists of isolation units with or without isolation components, where:

Isolation units are the basic elements of a base isolation system which are intended to provide the aforementioned decoupling[disambiguation needed effect to a building or non-building structure.

Isolation components are the connections between isolation units and their parts having no decoupling effect of their own.

 

Isolation units could consist of shear or sliding units.