NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION OF THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF MULTIFUNCTIONAL ISOLATION BEARINGS

To meet the different performance requirements of bridges under normal load and severe seismic load, a new type of multifunctional isolation bearing was designed. Finite element models of the bearing was developed in ANSYS, and the numerical simulation and experimental verification of the bearing were conducted. The results of the numerical analyses indicated that part of the lead core had come into plastic state when a vertical load of 350 kN was applied, and the laminated rubber was in compression in the trip-directions, whose hydrostatic pressure was much larger than the Mises stress. After 100 mm shear displacement was applied, the shear stress of the laminated rubber was still almost the same at different locations and the difference is lower than 5%, while the lead core underwent very large plastic deformations with 0.580 maximal Mises plastic strain. Besides, hysteresis loops of the bearing obtained from the simulation tests were consistent with the results of the shear strain and the vertical load correlation experiments, which verifies the accuracy of the numerical simulation of the bearing.