Bidirectional Modeling and Investigation of Quintuple Friction Pendulum Isolators Subjected to Various Seismic Excitations

Recently, a novel generation of friction pendulum (FP), known as the “quintuple friction pendulum (QFP)” isolator, was introduced to the literature. The primary advantages of this device come from its capacity to exhibit multistage adaptive behavior through its five effective pendula and nine operational regimes, thereby, offering substantial energy dissipation capabilities and smooth loading and unloading for structures subjected to lateral loads. However, the behavior of this device remains inadequately understood, necessitating further research to discuss the performance and applicability of this system in real‐world scenarios. This study explores the bidirectional behavior of the QFP isolator under both displacement‐controlled cyclic loading and earthquake conditions. As part of this investigation, the implementation of QFPs to SAP2000 for performing bidirectional behavior assessment is explained in detail. Moreover, the effect of various earthquake parameters, including fault distance, peak ground acceleration (PGA) to peak ground velocity (PGV) ratio, existence of pulse characteristics, and pulse period, is investigated. Besides, the influence of various QFPs with differing effective periods and damping ratios is assessed and compared. Finally, this study’s findings are important to engineers and researchers working in this field.