ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,241,276, issued on March 4, was assigned to IHI Corp. (Tokyo).
"Floating-type base isolation system" was invented by Takahiro Shimada (Tokyo), Akihito Otani (Tokyo), Satoru Kai (Tokyo), Xinglong Yan (Ibaraki, Japan) and Tomohiko Yamamoto (Ibaraki, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A floating-type base isolation system includes: a liquid storage portion storing liquid; a floating structure floated and arranged on the liquid; and a gas accommodation space formed at a position in contact with the liquid and accommodating gas. A volume of the gas accommodation space is set based on a natural frequency of a system that responds to a seismi...