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Analytical and experimental studies of the behaviour of equipment vibration isolators under seismic conditions

University of British Columbia

Analytical and experimental studies of the behaviour of equipment vibration isolators under seismic conditions are presented. A preliminary parametric study of the effect of equipment-structure interaction on the ultimate equipment response of general equipment-structure systems is considered first. The results of this study indicate the conditions under which a non-interactive approach can yield adequate ultimate equipment response estimates. A model of a prototype air handling unit mounted on vibration isolators was constructed for use in the experimental studies. Two types of vibration isolators -elastomeric isolators and open spring isolators with uni-directional restraint - were tested under static and dynamic conditions. The frequency and seismic response characteristics of these vibration isolated systems were obtained. The experimental results indicate that the vibration isolators have nonlinear stiffness characteristics and high damping values. The results also show that the elastomeric isolators can survive a substantially higher level of base excitation than the open spring isolators with uni-directional restraint Analytical models of the vibration isolated systems, based on the model identification test results, have been formulated. A numerical procedure, utilizing time series analysis, was used to solve the equations of motion of the systems. Good agreement between the experimental results and the analytical results was observed. This study indicates that the analytical procedure can be used to accurately predict the response characteristics of vibration isolated equipment systems subjected to known base excitation inputs.

Text

2010-05-28

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/25110

Civil Engineering

University of British Columbia

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