VERIFICATION OF ELASTOMERIC BEARINGS FINITE-ELEMENT MODELS IN CALCULATING SOFTWARE PACKAGES

Abstract

Introduction. While designing buildings and constructions with an elastomeric bearing with a lead core as a seismic isolation system, it is necessary to make calculations concerning effectiveness and reasonability of its usage. These demands lead to necessity to construct bearings in a common finite-element model, in order to consider how a bearing and a construction work together. Though a calculator has a lot of different variants of elastomeric bearing’s construction, which are connected to their implemented work model. To prove that obtained calculation results are sufficient and accurate, selection criteria of elastomeric bearings implemented work models are necessary. Materials and methods. To get accurate results we will compare elastomeric bearing’s work diagrams and free periods of motion when there are different variants of their numerical modelling with the help of software packages with factory tests results. Results. The researches have shown that lateral force’s and shear’s limit values are the same for all of the observed cases, although free periods of motion and work diagrams differ. Usage of more accurate bearing work model in software package Ansys/LS-Dyna can explain these differences, it can be seen if compare their work’s diagrams. Conclusions. Analysis of constructions with elastomeric bearings’ work, which function according to the idealized linear model, can be possible only for II level constructions. Idealized nonlinear models should be used for I level constructions.