THE PERFORMANCE OF INTER-STORY ISOLATED STRUCTURES SUBJECT TO WIND AND EARTHQUAKE HAZARDS

Abstract

The implementation of inter-story isolation has gained popularity over the past decade. The focus of this thesis is to study the performance of an inter-story isolated building under earthquake ground motion as well as high wind forces through the time-history analysis of a multi-degree-of-freedom building model. The performance of the structure is compared to a conventional building with the same number of floors. Potential improvements to the inter-story isolation system are analyzed including the effects of varying the stiffness of the isolation layer, as well as adding viscous and rate-independent linear damping. Finally, practical methods of implementing rate-independent linear damping are discussed.