Experimental evaluation of "ball rubber bearings" at different temperatures


Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, İnşaat Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2010

Öğrenci: SERKAN ERDAL

Danışman: ALP CANER

Özet:

Rubber material used in seismic isolation systems has a tendency to stiffen in cold climate conditions. Structural responses of rubber based seismic isolation bearings are known to be temperature dependent. The main focus of this research is to investigate the temperature related behavior shifts at a certain type of a rubber based seismic isolation system. This research is a complementary study to a recent experimental study on a newly developed seismic isolator called “Ball Rubber Bearing” (BRB). BRBs can be easily manufactured as in the case of a standard rubber based bridge bearing and can provide adequate energy dissipation during an earthquake. However, structural response of BRBs at low temperatures has not been examined yet. In this research, behavior of BRBs exposed to different temperatures is examined under combined axial and cyclic lateral load. The performance of the specimens used in this study, “Elastomeric Bearing” (EB) and “Ball Rubber Bearing” (BRB) are compared with each other and also with previous researches conducted in this topic. The results indicated that BRBs show better performance at low temperatures in terms of energy dissipation compared to room temperature performance. Big size bearings have higher energy dissipation per cycle compared to small size bearings by reason of size effect. The higher damping percentage is observed at the small size bearings compared to big size bearings due to better confinement of the inner core. As a result of temperature records heat exchange is not detected in the rubber during cyclic loading.