Experimental Behavior of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Isolators

This paper describes an investigation on the experimental behavior of innovative elastomeric isolators reinforced by carbon fiber fabrics. These fabrics are very much lighter than steel plates used in conventional isolators and able to transfer to the adjacent elastomer layers tangential stresses adequate to oppose the transversal deformation of rubber under vertical loads. The isolators are not bonded to the sub-and super-structure (elimination of the steel end-plates), hence their weight and cost are reduced. The experimental investigation is carried out on small-scale isolator prototypes reinforced by quadridirectional carbon fiber fabrics. The isolators are subjected to the following qualification tests prescribed by the Italian Code "Ordinanza 3274" for steel reinforced isolators: 1) "Static assessment of the compression stiffness"; 2) "Static assessment of the shear modulus G"; 3) "Dynamic assessment of the dynamic shear modulus G din and of the damping coefficient ξ; 4) "Assessment of the Gdin-γ and ξ-γ diagrams by means of dynamic tests"; 5) "Assessment of creep characteristics"; 6) "Evaluation of the capacity of sustaining at least 10 cycles". As a result of the tests, the isolators survived large shear strains, comparable to those expected for conventional isolators. © 2008 American Institute of Physics.