THE EFFECT OF LEAD RUBBER BEARING SEISMIC ISOLATOR ON PROGRESSIVE COLLAPSE POTENTIAL OF STEEL MOMENT FRAMES

Progressive collapse is defined as a local failure that may occur due to various factors in structural members; then, it can spread to adjacent members and ultimately result in the total collapse of the structure or a large portion of it. Though the abnormal loads could cause progressive collapse, many structures have experienced progressive collapse due to seismic actions in our modern history. Recently, some code specifications and guideline requirements such as Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC) have introduced different analysis methods for the assessment of progressive collapse in buildings based on increasing strength, ductility, and continuity. Many research works have been conducted in relation to the phenomenon of progressive collapse almost considering the gravity loads and, in recent years, seismic progressive collapse has attracted much attention and is an open research area for researchers. Lead Rubber Bearing (LRB) is considered as one of the most conventional isolation systems that has been studied and examined theoretically and developed widely in practice.This study investigates the potential of LRB base isolation under progressive collapse. For this purpose, the behavior of intermediate steel moment frames in the two cases of fixed and with the LRB seismic isolator with 4, 8, and 12 number of stories under progressive collapse is compared using nonlinear static and dynamic analysis in different situations of the column removal. At first, two fixed and isolated 3D structures were designed by SAP2000 software according to Iranian codes; then, analysis was performed under gravity load (consist of nonlinear static and dynamic analysis) according to UFC guild-lines and seismic loading (by nonlinear time history analysis) using Perform-3D software. The base isolation is modeled with an isolator element in the Perform-3D software, and these separators provide hysteresis damping through the sink of lead core.The addition of seismic base isolation system to structures averagely reduces the response of the frames under earthquakes by 61%. The progressive collapse potential of fixed and base isolated structures in the middle and corner column removal conditions is the same as the results of nonlinear static and dynamic analysis according to loading UFC instructions. Furthermore, the results of the progressive collapse analysis show that increasing the number of structural members leads to a reduction in progressive failure potential. It is observed that the use of base isolation system has a significant impact on the localization of the failures under seismic loads and prevention of their expansion in the structure.