Full‐scale shaking table test for examination of safety and functionality of base‐isolated medical facilities

A series of full-scale shaking table tests are conducted using the E-Defense shaking table facility on a base-isolated four-story RC hospital structure. A variety of furniture items, medical appliances, and service utilities are placed on the hospital specimen in as realistic a manner as possible. Four ground motions are adopted, including recorded near-fault ground motions and synthesized long-period, long-duration ground motions. The test results show that the base-isolated system performed very effectively against near-fault ground motions due to significant reduction in the floor acceleration response, and operability and functionality of the hospital service is improved significantly as compared with the case observed for the corresponding base-fixed system. Against the long-period ground motion, however, the hospital service is difficult to maintain, primarily because of the significant motion of furniture items and medical appliances supported by casters. Resonance accentuated large displacements and velocities on the floors of the base-isolated system, which causes such furniture items and medical appliances to slide, sometimes more than 3 m, resulting in occasional collision with other furnitures or against the surrounding partition walls. It is notable that a key to maintaining the function of the medical facilities is to securely lock the casters of furniture and medical appliances. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

[1]  Chin-Hsiung Loh,et al.  Experimental performance evaluation of an equipment isolation using MR dampers , 2009 .

[2]  Kojiro Irikura,et al.  21209 Damage prediction of long-period structures during great subduction earthquakes : Part 2 : Damage prediction map of steel high-rise buildings in the Osaka basin for the future Nankai Earthquake , 2007 .

[3]  Masayoshi Nakashima,et al.  Steel moment frames for earthquakes in United States and Japan , 2000 .

[4]  Lyan-Ywan Lu,et al.  Experiment and analysis of a leverage‐type stiffness‐controllable isolation system for seismic engineering , 2010 .

[5]  George C. Lee,et al.  A parametric study of seismic behavior of roller seismic isolation bearings for highway bridges , 2009 .

[6]  Peng Pan,et al.  BASE-ISOLATION DESIGN PRACTICE IN JAPAN: INTRODUCTION TO THE POST-KOBE APPROACH , 2005 .

[7]  Koichiro Obana,et al.  Seismic Activities along the Nankai Trough , 2003 .

[8]  Jinping Ou,et al.  Experimental and analytical study on pounding reduction of base‐isolated highway bridges using MR dampers , 2009 .

[9]  Masayoshi Nakashima,et al.  Seismic resistance capacity of beam–column connections in high‐rise buildings: E‐Defense shaking table test , 2011 .

[10]  George C. Yao,et al.  Performance of a guideway seismic isolator with magnetic springs for precision machinery , 2009 .

[11]  Satoshi Yamada,et al.  Full scale shaking table collapse experiment on 4-story steel moment frame: Part 2 detail of collapse behavior , 2009 .

[12]  Satish Nagarajaiah,et al.  Response of Base-Isolated USC Hospital Building in Northridge Earthquake , 2000 .

[13]  Xiaodong Ji,et al.  A substructure shaking table test for reproduction of earthquake responses of high‐rise buildings , 2009 .

[14]  Guang Li,et al.  Testing of dynamically substructured, base-isolated systems using adaptive control techniques , 2009 .

[15]  Michael C. Constantinou,et al.  Evaluation of simplified methods of analysis for structures with triple friction pendulum isolators , 2009 .

[16]  Masayoshi Nakashima,et al.  Seismic resistance capacity of high-rise buildings subjected to long-period ground motions: E-defense shaking table test , 2010 .

[17]  Heki Shibata,et al.  Construction of a three–dimensional, large–scale shaking table and development of core technology , 2001, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.