Building design againts earthquake: the use of pendulums in oscillation control.

This research deals with the dynamical evolutions played by a simple mechanical model. The model is constituted of a parallelepiped standing on a horizontal plane. As the plane performs vibrational displacements the parallelepiped begins to evolve its positions and, this “parallelepi-ped movements” constitutes the subject of our concern. Plane movement is assumed so, not-withstanding we name it as a parallelepiped, or “rocking block”, the structure is actually sche-matized as a “physical rectangle”. From this simple model and its elaboration by adding a planar physical pendulum and some damping between the parallelepiped and the ground surface, some interesting results have been achieved.