Design and Experimental Analysis of Fiber Reinforced Elastomeric Isolator

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of mechanical properties of the FREI using horizontal stiffness and vertical stiffness by experiments. Two kinds of FREI are designed and fabricated. The steel plates of SREI are replaced with fibers in order to reduce the cost of fabrication and installation. At first, the Nylon fiber is adopted as feasibility study of FREI. The experimental results of Nylon FREI and SREI show that the vertical stiffness of Nylon FREI is lower than SREI, and effective damping is two times higher than SREI. Carbon is adopted, by these rusults, as strong reinforcement than Nylon and full scale of carbon FREI was designed and fabricated. By the experimental test results, it is shown that the vertical stiffness of carbon FREI is three times higher than SREI, and two times higher in effective damping. As a result, the proposed FREI can replace the SREI as a seismic isolator.