Key Findings from the Nonlinear Base-Isolated Benchmark

Two phases of the benchmark problem on base-isolated buildings concluded recently, culminating in two separate special issues in the Journal of Structural Control and Health Monitoring. The base-isolated building considered in the benchmark problem is based on the USC hospital building in Southern California. The goal of this benchmark is to provide a common computational test-bed to analyze competing control strategies on base-isolated buildings, including devices, algorithms and sensors. To achieve this goal, a 3-D finite-element model was developed in MATLAB to represent the complex behavior of the full-scale base-isolated building with lateral-torsional behavior. The model allows users to model both linear and nonlinear isolation systems. A nonlinear structural analysis tool was developed in MatlabTM and distributed to the participants for nonlinear dynamic analysis. Over twenty papers in two special issues in the Journal of Structural Control and Health Monitoring were published as a result of this effort. This paper presents an overview of this benchmark effort.