The anti-seismic problem of rural residential buildings is the weak link of seismic retrofitting in China. Recently, geotechnical seismic isolation (GSI) technology based on rubber-sand mixtures (GSI-RSM) using rubber-sand mixtures (RSM) between the structural foundation and the foundation soil has been proven to have the possibility of potential applications in rural residential buildings. Many theoretical studies exist on the effectiveness of seismic isolation of the GSI-RSM system, but few studies on either the seismic response test of model buildings placed on the RSM layer or the large-scale shaking table test exist. Therefore, this study considers a large shaking table test performed on a 1/4 single-story masonry structure model with and without a GSI-RSM system by selecting a standard input ground motion and varying input acceleration amplitudes. The test results show that the GSI-RSM system can reduce the seismic response of superstructures. The isolation effect of the GSI-RSM system is low in small earthquakes and increases with increasing earthquake magnitude. Overall, the RSM layer can filter part of the high-frequency components of the earthquake to transmit to the superstructure and consume more seismic energy by generating friction slip in the interaction with the structural foundation.
Keywords: base isolation; geotechnical seismic isolation; rubber; rural buildings; shaking table test.