Real-Time Hybrid Simulation: Application to the Evaluation of the Dynamic Behavior of a Building with Reinforced Concrete Thin Walls and Non-Connected Seismic Isolators

In LATAM, and special in Colombia, the implementation of the Industrialized System (IS), which consists of buildings with reinforced concrete thin walls (RCTW), has generated an important reception in the industry due to its technical and economic advantages. However, different investigations have reported that the structural performance of the RCTW presents low ductility, instability outside the plane, presence of brittle failures, among other aspects. Therefore, the base isolation technique is seen as a reliable and accessible alternative to reduce the vulnerability of these buildings in a seismic event. Conventionally, for the analysis of isolated structures, numerical models with simplified hysteresis are used for a specific deformation condition in the insulators. This ignores the non- linearities present along different deformation states. In order to consider a full dynamic of the seismic isolators, an experimental technique known as: Real Time Hybrid Simulation (RTHS) was implemented. This technique substructure the isolated RCTW building into a numerical, corresponding to a model of the structure; and an experimental component, in which test specimens were used non-connected elastomeric insulators on a reduced scale. Finally, the responses of the isolated structure in ETABS19 are compared with those obtained in the RTHS tests under four seismic events, obtaining similar performance levels for isolator deformations close to 100%. But, for lower deformation levels the simulated responses in ETABS19 are greater due to effective damping ratios close to 4% compared to 10% in the RTHS tests.