Seismic Protection of Buildings by Rubber-Soil Mixture as Foundation Isolation

This article proposes a promising seismic isolation method especially suitable for developing countries like India. This scheme includes the use of a rubber soil mixture. Here, the performance of a well-designed layer of sand mixed with shredded rubber as foundation isolation is studied numerically. The computer software ABAQUS CAE has been employed to model the dynamic response of soil structure in this study. On the other hand, the use of scrap tires as the rubber material can provide an alternative way to consume the huge stock of scrap tire all over the world. Moreover, the cost of the proposed seismic scheme can greatly benefit low-cost houses for which resources and technology are not adequate for earthquake mitigation with well-developed yet expensive techniques. The proposed method has been demonstrated through a series of numerical simulation. On an average, the proposed scheme can reduce the horizontal ground acceleration by 50%. A parametric study also has been carried out here.