Good Features
Reinforced Concrete (RC) Buildings
RC stands for “reinforced concrete”, meaning the construction of the building is mostly based on concrete and reinforced with steel. Most of the buildings in Taiwan already use this.
Base isolation
Base isolation involves the separation of the building from the base, which introduces a decoupling effect to mitigate the impact. Here’s an example of base isolation vs no base isolation.
Damping
Damping is essentially the loss of energy in oscillating systems. In other words, it reduces the shaking a building experiences during an earthquake, and is essential in mitigating earthquake impact. Here’s how it works:
Two images are two models that represent a 3 floor building, with each block representing each floor. keep in mind that these models have been simplified into ODEs, and are not realistic of actual builidng motion during earthquakes, first model has no damping, while the second model has damping.
The second image is what it would look like with damping. Notice how the shaking decreases over time. This is because there is a velocity proportional term.
Taipei 101 is a great example of damping to survive during earthquakes. Despite being 1667 feet tall, it is able to withstand high forces from typhoons and earthquakes. This is because it has a giant mass tuned damper:
This damper is located on the top floors.
Another notable type of damper is called the viscoelastic damper. It is one of the cheapest dampers for buildings, and it’s model (shown below Kelvin Voigt) consists of a spring and a dashpot in parallel. Here’s a strain vs time graph of this damper:
Essentially, it is great for damping and it also minimizes deformation.
