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Base isolation is an important strategy for protecting structures from earthquake excitations.
Base isolation attempts to isolate a structure from the external ground excitations, not by trying to dissipate the energy of the earthquake within the structure, rather by not allowing this energy to even enter the structure. As a testament to this strategy, buildings in the Kansai region of Japan with base isolation devices survived the devastating 1995 Kobe Earthquake with little or no damage. This event has prompted great interest in the viability of base isolation for seismic protection of Civil structures. Currently base isolation devices which are composed of rubber component and lead plug used for gaining a damping are widely applied. These components have nonlinearlities.