Performance of geotechnical seismic isolation using stone pebble-geogrid layer: Experimental investigation

The effect of geogrid on the efficiency of geotechnical seismic isolation using a layer of stone pebbles is experimentally investigated in this study. Four different foundation support cases (rigid base, thin layer of stone pebble, thin layer of stone pebble with geogrid at the layer top, and thick layer of stone pebble with geogrid at the layer top) were tested on four models of different stiffness's (from very stiff to flexible). The models were exposed to the action of four different accelerogram. Test results confirmed that the geogrid significantly improved the seismic isolation performance of the stone pebble layer. Tested seismic isolation is highly promising for low-rise stiff buildings (T < 0.4 s) resting on solid ground.