Quintuple Friction Pendulum Isolator: Behavior, Modeling, and Validation

This paper describes the behavior of the quintuple friction pendulum isolator, a spherical sliding isolator with six sliding surfaces, five effective pendula, and nine regimes of operation that allow for complex multi-stage adaptive behavior depending on the amplitude of displacement. An analytical model is presented that is capable of tracing the behavior of the isolator in two general configurations of geometric and frictional properties. This analytical model is useful for verifying computational models and in performing simplified calculations for analysis and design. A computational model that can be implemented in the program SAP2000 is also presented and verified by comparison to the analytical model. A model quintuple friction pendulum isolator has been tested and the results have been used to validate the analytical and computational models.