Experimental and mathematical model of a novel viscoelastic bio-inspired multi-dimensional vibration isolation device

The earthquake usually causes multi-dimensional vibration for the large span grid structure, how to effectively isolate and mitigate the vibration response of structure is an important problem in engineering. In this paper, a novel viscoelastic bio-inspired multi-dimensional vibration isolation (VBM-VI) device is proposed under the inspiration of bionic design of the bird legs, which possesses multi-dimensional vibration isolation performance by constituting of viscoelastic core pad and VE-LLS device together. The property experiment of the VBM-VI device is performed to explore the mechanical performance at vertical and horizonal directions, the hysteretic curves and characteristic parameters are discussed to reveal the influence of the excitation frequency and amplitude on the mechanical properties of the VBM-VI device, the experimental results show that the mechanical properties express significant frequency and amplitude dependence at vertical and horizontal directions. To further describe the mechanical proprieties of the VBM-VI device, the mathematical models are established at vertical and horizontal directions respectively, and the comparison analysis between experimental and theoretical results indicates that the established mathematical models can precisely describe mechanical performance of the VBM-VI device. © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.