Application of seismic isolation for multi-story buildings in moderate seismicity areas like Vietnam

Multi-story buildings are important components of urban infrastructures due to their undeniable advantages. However, their structures are characterized by the mass distributed in height and a great slenderness leading to its earthquake vulnerability. Further, their typical structures designed by the conventional method provide low earthquake resistance. The seismic isolation bearings are considered as an effective solution for the structure located in regions of high and moderate seismic activity. The paper presents the procedure to calculate the isolated building structure located in the moderate seismicity areas such as Vietnam. The bilinear hysteretic model is employed to determine the properties of the isolator through the simplified procedure. Three-dimensional model of a typical 11-story building structure is analyzed to evaluate the effect of the isolator on seismic responses of building. The modal analysis and time history analysis are performed using Etabs V17, with the input record taken according to the earthquake ground motion in Hanoi-Vietnam, calculated by the Vietnamese code. The result shows the high effectiveness of isolator on reducing the seismic effect. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.