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Optimized earthquake response of multi‐storey buildings with seismic isolation at various elevations

The response of multi‐storey structures can be controlled under earthquake actions by installing seismic isolators at various storey levels. By vertically distributing isolation devices at various elevations, the designer is provided with numerous options to appropriately adjust the seismic performance of a building. However, introducing seismic isolators at various storey levels is not a straightforward task, as it may lead to favourable or unfavourable structural behaviour depending on a large number of factors. As a consequence, a rather chaotic decision space of seismic isolation configurations arises, within which a favourable solution needs to be located. The search for favourable isolators' configurations is formulated in this work as a single‐objective optimization task. The aim of the optimization process is to minimize the maximum floor acceleration of the building under consideration, while constraints are specified to control the maximum interstorey drift, the maximum base displacement and the total seismic isolation cost. A genetic algorithm is implemented to perform this optimization task, which selectively introduces seismic isolators at various elevations, in order to identify the optimal configuration for the isolators satisfying the pre‐specified constraints. This way, optimized earthquake response of multi‐storey buildings can be obtained. The effectiveness of the proposed optimization procedure in the design of a seismically isolated structure is demonstrated in a numerical study using time‐history analyses of a typical six‐storey building. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.