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Earthquakes prove to be the most damaging disasters today, affecting millions of buildings almost every year across the world. Either structures may be built to withstand the disruptive effects of earthquakes in order to provide healthy living environments, or seismic isolators may be provided to reduce these effects. There are different soil reinforcement materials used in the past inn order to increase the bearing capacity of soil and also to reduce the settlement in soil etc. In the last few decades, a significant amount of experimental research has been conducted to investigate the vibration screening problem. For example, Barkan and McNeill et al. were the first to report on actual vibration isolation applications. Here the material, EPS geofoam, its application as a vibration isolator is discussed in this study. EPS geofoam is available in numerous material types that can be chosen by the designer for a specific application. Its service life is comparable to other construction materials and it will retain its physical properties under engineered conditions of use. The lifetime of geofoam is about 70 to 100 years. The use of EPS typically translates into benefits to construction schedules and lowers the overall cost of construction because it is easy to handle during construction, often without the need for special equipment, and is unaffected by occurring weather conditions.
The generic term 'Geofoam' was proposed by Horvath (1992) to describe all the rigid plastic foams that are used in geotechnical applications. Later, the definition of geofoam was broadened to include any cellular material or product created by an expansion process. Expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam has been used as a geotechnical reinforcement material since 1960s. Because of its excellent mechanical properties such as light-weight fill, pressure reduction, noise and vibration damping, thermal insulation, and compressible inclusions, EPS geofoam has been widely used in geotechnical engineering (Aytekin, 1997; Zou and Leo, 1998; Horvath, 1997; Stark et al., 2004). Geofoam technology has since been used as a super light-weight embankment material for roadway and rail construction in Europe, Asia, and the United States (Frydenlund and Aabe, 1996; Miki, 1996; Bartlett et al., 2000, 2012a; Farnsworth et al., 2008; Riad et al., 2004; Snow et al., 2010).