Chapter 13: Special seismic-protective technologies

The performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) movement of the last two and a half decades has provided engineers with a full toolkit of analysis methods and models with which to evaluate the expected seismic performance of their buildings, and to communicate this to their clients. While many (maybe most) clients have no interest in going beyond their code-defined legal obligations, others are somewhat shocked to hear what ‘acceptable code performance’ would mean for their shiny new building in a large earthquake.

The other side of the PBEE revolution has been the development of special seismic-protective technologies and construction details that enable improved performance. Indeed, the most mature of these systems, seismic isolation, dates back to the late 1960s: the first use of rubber bearings for isolation was in Skopje, Macedonia, in 1969, and ‘modern’ lead–rubber isolation bearings were developed in New Zealand in the mid-1970s.