On the evening of August 8, 2017, an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 occurred in Jiuzhaigou County, Aba Prefecture, Sichuan Province, with a focal depth of 20 km. The earthquake attracted wide attention from the media and the public at home and abroad.
Earthquakes are very dangerous in natural disasters. As a kind of polymer elastomer material, rubber has been regarded as a special material to deal with earthquake since 1950s, which can play a role in reducing earthquake damage. From the results obtained, it has incomparable characteristics with other materials.
Quake-resistant products based on rubber have been developed one after another, and progress has been made in Japan, the United States and other countries.
Rubber bearings are mainly used in isolation buildings. Rubber bearings can reduce earthquake action, eliminate or effectively reduce structural or non-structural damage, and thus play a role of isolation and reduction of seismic energy. In fact, it consumes most of the seismic energy through the isolation layer, alleviates the inertial earthquake action of the superstructure, thus effectively reducing the acceleration response of the structure caused by the earthquake, reducing inter-layer shear force and corresponding shear deformation.
There are several main types of rubber isolation bearings: natural rubber bearings, lead rubber bearings, and elastic sliding bearings. They each have their own features and different installers.
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao bridge, the largest bridge across the sea in China, is equipped with newly developed rubber isolation supports on each pier to withstand the damage caused by typhoons, earthquakes and other external forces.
The realization of the world's largest isolated building, Kunming new airport terminal, has developed large-sized and high-load supports, low-hardness isolation supports, high-damping isolation supports and low-friction sliding supports.
Independent innovation has been achieved in rubber formulation and production technology, and the problem of poor performance and quality stability of isolation bearings has been overcome. The aseismic performance has reached the level of developed countries.
