Base isolation, also known as seismic base isolation[2] or base isolation system,[3] is one of

the most popular means of protecting a structure against earthquake forces.[4] It is a

collection of structural elements which should substantially decouple[disambiguation needed]
a superstructure from its substructure resting on a shaking ground thus protecting a building
or non-building structure's integrity.[5]

Base isolation is one of the most powerful tools of earthquake engineering pertaining to the
passive structural vibration control technologies. It is meant to enable a building or nonbuilding structure to survive a potentially devastating seismic impact through a proper initial
design or subsequent modifications. In some cases, application of base isolation can raise
both a structure's seismic performance and its seismic sustainability considerably. Contrary to
popular belief base isolation does not make a building earthquake proof.

Base isolation system consists of isolation units with or without isolation components, where:
Isolation units are the basic elements of a base isolation system which are intended to provide
the aforementioned decoupling[disambiguation needed] effect to a building or non-building
structure.
Isolation components are the connections between isolation units and their parts having no
decoupling effect of their own.
By their response to an earthquake impact, all isolation units may be divided into two basic
categories: shear units[6] and sliding units.[7] The first evidence of architects using the
principle of base isolation for earthquake protection was discovered in Pasargadae,[8] a city in
ancient Persia, now Iran: it goes back to 6th century BC. It works by having a wide and deep
stone and mortar foundation, smoothed at the top, upon which a second foundation is built of
wide, smoothed stones which are linked together, forming a plate that slides back and forth
over the lower foundation in case of an earthquake, leaving the structure intact.
This technology can be used for both new structural design[9] and seismic retrofit. In process
of seismic retrofit, some of the most prominent U.S. monuments, e.g. Pasadena City Hall, San
Francisco City Hall, Salt Lake City and County Building or LA City Hall were mounted on Base
Isolation Systems. It required creating rigidity diaphragms and moats around the buildings, as
well as making provisions against overturning and P-Delta Effect.
Base isolation is also used on a smaller scale - sometimes down to a single room in a building.
Isolated raised-floor systems are used to safeguard essential equipment against earthquakes.
The technique has been incorporated to protect statues and other works of art - see, for
instance, Rodin's Gates of Hell at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo's Ueno Park.
The Earthquake Problem

Severity of ground shaking at a given location during an earthquake can be minor, moderate
and strong. Relatively speaking, minor shaking occurs frequently, moderate shaking
occasionally and strong shaking rarely. For instance, on average annually about 800
earthquakes of magnitude 5.0-5.9 occur in the world while the number is only about 18 for
magnitude range 7.0-7.9. So, should we design and construct a building to resist that rare
earthquake shaking that may come only once in 500 years or even once in 2000 years at the
chosen project site, even though the life of the building itself may be only 50 or 100 years?

Since it costs money to provide additional earthquake safety in buildings, a conflict arises:
Should we do away with the design of buildings for earthquake effects? Or should we design
the buildings to be earthquake proof wherein there is no damage during the strong but rare
earthquake shaking? Clearly, the former approach can lead to a major disaster, and the
second approach is too expensive. Hence, the design philosophy should lie somewhere in
between these two extremes.

Earthquake-Resistant Buildings

The engineers do not attempt to make earthquake-proof buildings that will not get damaged
even during the rare but strong earthquake; such buildings will be too robust and also too
expensive. Instead, the engineering intention is to make buildings earthquake-resistant; such
buildings resist the effects of ground shaking, although they may get damaged severely but
would not collapse during the strong earthquake. Thus, safety of people and contents is
assured in earthquake-resistant buildings, and thereby a disaster is avoided. This is a major
objective of seismic design codes throughout the world.

Earthquake Design Philosophy

The earthquake design philosophy may be summarized as follows (Figure 1):
(a) Under minor but frequent shaking, the main members of the building that carry vertical
and horizontal forces should not be damaged; however building parts that do not carry load
may sustain repairable damage.
(b) Under moderate but occasional shaking, the main members may sustain repairable
damage, while the other parts of the building may be damaged such that they may even have
to be replaced after the earthquake; and
(c) Under strong but rare shaking, the main members may sustain severe (even irreparable)
damage, but the building should not collapse.

Thus, after minor shaking, the building will be fully operational within a short time and the
repair costs will be small. And, after moderate shaking, the building will be operational once
the repair and strengthening of the damaged main members is completed. But, after a strong
earthquake, the building may become dysfunctional for further use, but will stand so that
people can be evacuated and property recovered.

The consequences of damage have to be kept in view in the design philosophy. For example,
important buildings, like hospitals and fire stations, play a critical role in post-earthquake
activities and must remain functional immediately after the earthquake. These structures
must sustain very little damage and should be designed for a higher level of earthquake
protection. Collapse of dams during earthquakes can cause flooding in the downstream
reaches, which itself can be a secondary disaster. Therefore, dams (and similarly, nuclear
power plants) should be designed for still higher level of earthquake motion.

Damage in Buildings: Unavoidable

Design of buildings to resist earthquakes involves controlling the damage to acceptable levels
at a reasonable cost. Contrary to the common thinking that any crack in the building after an
earthquake means the building is unsafe for habitation, engineers designing earthquakeresistant buildings recognize that some damage is unavoidable. Different types of damage
(mainly visualized though cracks; especially so in concrete and masonry buildings) occur in
buildings during earthquakes. Some of these cracks are acceptable (in terms of both their size
and location), while others are not. For instance, in a reinforced concrete frame building with
masonry filler walls between columns, the cracks between vertical columns and masonry filler
walls are acceptable, but diagonal cracks running through the columns are not (Figure 2). In
general, qualified technical professionals are knowledgeable of the causes and severity of
damage in earthquake-resistant buildings.
Earthquake-resistant design is therefore concerned about ensuring that the damages in
buildings during earthquakes are of the acceptable variety, and also that they occur at the
right places and in right amounts. This approach of earthquake-resistant design is much like
the use of electrical fuses in houses: to protect the entire electrical wiring and appliances in
the house, you sacrifice some small parts of the electrical circuit, called fuses; these fuses are
easily replaced after the electrical over-current. Likewise, to save the building from collapsing,
you need to allow some pre-determined parts to undergo the acceptable type and level of
damage.

Acceptable Damage: Ductility

So, the task now is to identify acceptable forms of damage and desirable building behaviour
during earthquakes. To do this, let us first understand how different materials behave.
Consider white chalk used to write on blackboards and steel pins with solid heads used to hold
sheets of paper together. Yes a chalk breaks easily!! On the contrary, a steel pin allows it to
be bent back-and-forth. Engineers define the property that allows steel pins to bend back-andforth by large amounts, as ductility; chalk is a brittle material.

Earthquake-resistant buildings, particularly their main elements, need to be built with ductility
in them.

Such buildings have the ability to sway back-and-forth during an earthquake, and to withstand
earthquake effects with some damage, but without collapse (Figure 3). Ductility is one of the
most important factors affecting the building performance. Thus, earthquake-resistant design
strives to predetermine the locations where damage takes place and then to provide good
detailing at these locations to ensure ductile behaviour of the building.

What are the Seismic Effects on Structures?

Inertia Forces in Structures
Earthquake causes shaking of the ground. So a building resting on it will experience motion at
its base. From Newtons First Law of Motion, even though the base of the building moves with
the ground, the roof has a tendency to stay in its original position. But since the walls and
columns are connected to it, they drag the roof along with them. This is much like the
situation that you are faced with when the bus you are standing in suddenly starts; your feet
move with the bus, but your upper body tends to stay back making you fall backwards!! This
tendency to continue to remain in the previous position is known as inertia. In the building,
since the walls or columns are flexible, the motion of the roof is different from that of the
ground (Figure 1).

Consider a building whose roof is supported on columns (Figure 2). Coming back to the
analogy of yourself on the bus: when the bus suddenly starts, you are thrown backwards as if
someone has applied a force on the upper body. Similarly, when the ground moves, even the
building is thrown backwards, and the roof experiences a force, called inertia force. If the roof
has a mass M and experiences an acceleration a, then from Newtons Second Law of Motion,
the inertia force FI is mass M times acceleration a, and its direction is opposite to that of the

acceleration. Clearly, more mass means higher inertia force. Therefore, lighter buildings
sustain the earthquake shaking better.

Effect of Deformations in Structures

The inertia force experienced by the roof is transferred to the ground via the columns, causing
forces in columns. These forces generated in the columns can also be understood in another
way. During earthquake shaking, the columns undergo relative movement between their ends.
In Figure 2, this movement is shown as quantity u between the roof and the ground. But,
given a free option, columns would like to come back to the straight vertical position, i.e.,
columns resist deformations. In the straight vertical position, the columns carry no horizontal
earthquake force through them. But, when forced to bend, they develop internal forces. The
larger is the relative horizontal displacement u between the top and bottom of the column,
the larger this internal force in columns. Also, the stiffer the columns are (i.e., bigger is the
column size), larger is this force. For this reason, these internal forces in the columns are
called stiffness forces. In fact, the stiffness force in a column is the column stiffness times the
relative displacement between its ends.

Figure 2: Inertia force and relative motion within a

building

Horizontal and Vertical Shaking

Earthquake causes shaking of the ground in all three directions along the two horizontal
directions (X and Y, say), and the vertical direction (Z, say) (Figure 3). Also, during the
earthquake, the ground shakes randomly back and forth (- and +) along each of these X, Y
and Z directions. All structures are primarily designed to carry the gravity loads, i.e., they are
designed for a force equal to the mass M (this includes mass due to own weight and imposed
loads) times the acceleration due to gravity g acting in the vertical downward direction (-Z).
The downward force Mg is called the gravity load. The vertical acceleration during ground
shaking either adds to or subtracts from the acceleration due to gravity. Since factors of
safety are used in the design of structures to resist the gravity loads, usually most structures
tend to be adequate against vertical shaking.

However, horizontal shaking along X and Y directions (both + and directions of each) remains a
concern. Structures designed for gravity loads, in general, may not be able to safely sustain the
effects of horizontal earthquake shaking. Hence, it is necessary to ensure adequacy of the
structures against horizontal earthquake effects.
Flow of Inertia Forces to Foundations
Under horizontal shaking of the ground, horizontal inertia forces are generated at level of the
mass of the structure (usually situated at the floor levels). These lateral inertia forces are
transferred by the floor slab to the walls or columns, to the foundations, and finally to the soil
system underneath (Figure 4). So, each of these structural elements (floor slabs, walls, columns,
and foundations) and the connections between them must be designed to safely transfer these
inertia forces through them.

Figure 4: Flow of seismic inertia forces through all structural components.

Walls or columns are the most critical elements in transferring the inertia forces. But, in traditional
construction, floor slabs and beams receive more care and attention during design and
construction, than walls and columns. Walls are relatively thin and often made of brittle material
like masonry. They are poor in carrying horizontal earthquake inertia forces along the direction of
their thickness. Failures of masonry walls have been observed in many earthquakes in the past
(e.g., Figure 5a). Similarly, poorly designed and constructed reinforced concrete columns can be
disastrous. The failure of the ground storey columns resulted in numerous building collapses
during the 2001 Bhuj (India) earthquake (Figure 5b).

AD 7
PEOPLE TO THE RIVER

HOW DO WE DRAW PEOPLE TO THE RIVER?Like a beacon of light Woodward Avenue is

utilized to create a new Ceremonial Spine through the Riverfront site , creating a PEOPLE TO
THE RIVER invitation that extends from the new Sculpture Island out into the connected
neighborhoods of Detroit and beyond.

The design iconography of the site reflects the native MOUND BUILDERS of the Detroit River
area abstracted as structural geometric spatial units that reorganize the disparate existing
site elements into a sculptural whole. The approximately two acre spatial units create human
scale for each of the programmed activities within each space. The Design Components:

Woodward Avenue Promenade

a new pedestrian corridor extending the Avenue

Sculpture Island
a new island within the Detroit River reflecting Mound Builders

Dodge Fountain Plaza

an added granite ring around the plaza to define human scale

Transcending Green
new open green space and new civic buildings with habitable green roof

Veterans Green
new ice skating rink, plaza, and new Veterans building with habitable green roof

Amphitheater
new 1.5 acre grass slope theater with performance stage and shelter

Great Lawn
new slopped lawn down to river with new Market Hub, E Jefferson Lawn and Prairie Lawn

Gangway Bridges & Overlooks

new gangway bridges that extend the axis of the park spaces out to the river

River Walk Plaza

new landscape plantings and river room seating areas along the expanded River Walk