A New Experimental Manner to Determinate Design Parameters of High Damping Rubber Bearings

Abstract

High damping rubber bearings (HDRB) is an efficient technique developed to prevent or minimize damage to buildings during earthquakes. HDRB with high flexibility and high damping capacity have been widely applied in Japan. The high flexibility will be able to move the structures’ natural refequencies to shirk the resonance with excitation, while their high damping capability can reduce the corresponding displacement. In seismic design codes (AASHTO 2010, JRA 2004), the design parameters of HDRB are identified from a stress-strain loop of sinusoidal bearing experiment results. The specimens of HDRB are designed based on ISO 2005, however, the cost of these specimens is quite high. In this paper, a new test manner, namely lap shear tests with cheap cost is investigated to replace the bearing tests. The analytical results show that lap shear tests may be the alternative method for determination of design parameters of HDRB.