Vibration Control of Structures through Structure-Soil-Structure-Interaction

Devices such as isolators, dampers and tuned mass dampers are now widely used in the construction industry for earthquake engineering to reduce vibration in new and, in a few cases, existing buildings. The application in to existing building is in general limited by the costs and in the case of historical building by local regulations. Aiming at the vibration control of existing structures in this paper it is proposed for the first time to exploit the structure-soil-structure mechanism as a vehicle to reduce the vibrations of structures due to seismic action. Specifically a novel device, herein called Vibrating Barrier (ViBa) hosted in the soil and detached from the structure is designed to protect a given structure. The ViBa is a massive structure whose structural parameters are calibrated to absorb portion of the ground motion input energy so to reduce the vibrations of the structure. Modelling the ground motion as zero-mean quasi-stationary response-spectrum-compatible Gaussian stochastic process, the soil as visco-elastic medium and linear behaving structures various examples are produced to show the effectiveness of the novel approach. Reduction up to 44% of the response has been achieved.