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Riyadh, Miah Mohammed

University of British Columbia

Elastomeric isolators dissipate the earthquake energy by providing lateral flexibility, increasing public safety, and reducing the expense of rehabilitation. Steel reinforced elastomeric isolators (SREIs) are the most well-known passive earthquake protection systems which are used in widespread applications of buildings and bridges. SREIs consist of alternate layers of elastomer and steel reinforcement and are usually heavy and expensive. Therefore, they are often limited to expensive and important structures. In seek of broadening the usage of elastomeric isolators by improving their performance, as well as making them lighter and inexpensive, carbon-fiber reinforced elastomeric isolators (C-FREIs) were introduced. C-FREIs consist of carbon fiber sheets instead of steel as the reinforcement and they show satisfactory performance in both vertical and horizontal directions. They can also be used in both bonded and unbonded applications due to the fiber reinforcement having a lack of flexural rigidity. However, C-FREIs undergo premature delamination when used in bonded applications and possess a low energy dissipation capability in unbonded applications. Using polyurethane material in the form of circular cores is a partial solution to overcome the described limitations of C-FREIs. Polyurethane due to its high abrasion resistance and energy dissipation capability makes them an excellent candidate for energy dissipation applications. The objective of this thesis is to introduce and test a novel usage of polyurethane cores in C-FREIs. First, the carbon-fiber reinforced elastomeric isolators with polyurethane cores (C-FRPEs) were designed and fabricated. Then, the C-FRPEs were tested under a series of vertical and compressive-shear loadings to evaluate their vertical and horizontal performance characteristics. Based on the experimental observations, the results showed that incorporating the C-FREIs with polyurethane cores improves their re-centering capability, and noticeably enhances their energy dissipation capacity. It was also revealed that the polyurethane cores in C-FREIs were able to significantly improve the delamination behavior in bonded applications.

Text

2022-02-08

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/80798

Civil Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/