DYNAMIC SOIL-STRUCTURE INTERACTION EFFECTS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF BASE ISOLATION TECHNIQUES IN BUILDINGS

Base isolation is a well-established strategy for seismic protection, achieved by inserting highly deformable and energy-dissipating devices at the foundation level to decouple the structure from ground motion. However, conventional design approaches often overlook the influence of soil-structure interaction, which can substantially alter the foundation input motion and the deformation patterns of the overall system. The present research aims to incorporate soil-structure interaction effects into a comprehensive design methodology, to enhance the seismic performance of base isolation systems and prevent adverse outcomes arising from coupled dynamic responses. As a first step, a preliminary analysis on a benchmark study is presented involving a well-documented base-isolated building, in which the interaction with the foundation soil is explicitly considered. Nonlinear dynamic analyses are carried out using the numerical environment OpenSees, simulating the nonlinear and frequency-dependent features of the coupled soil-foundation-isolators-structure system.