• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.215-222
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• 2020

In this paper, slit steel rubber bearing is presented as an innovative seismic isolator device. In this type of isolator, slit steel damper is an energy dissipation device. Its advantages in comparison with that of the lead rubber bearing are its simplicity in manufacturing process and replacement of its yielding parts. Also, slit steel rubber bearing has the same ability to dissipate energy with smaller value of displacement. Using finite element method in ABAQUS software, a parametric study is done on the performance of this bearing. Three different kinds of isolator with three different values of strut width, 9, 12 and 15 mm, three values of thickness, 4, 6 and 8 mm and two steel types with different yield stress are assessed. Effects of these parameters on the performance characteristics of slit steel rubber bearing are studied. It is shown that by decreasing the thickness and strut width and by selecting the material with lower yield stress, values of effective stiffness, energy dissipation capacity and lateral force in the isolator reduce but equivalent viscous damping is not affected significantly. Thus, by choosing appropriate values for thickness, strut width and slit steel damper yield stress, an isolator with the desired behavior can be achieved. Finally, the performance of an 8-storey frame with the proposed isolator is compared with the same frame equipped with LRB. Results show that SSRB is successful in base shear reduction of structure in a different way from LRB.