Vibration isolation stacks for gravitational wave detectors - finite element analysis

Seismic isolation is a necessity for many delicate experiments such as those designed to search for gravitational radiation. One method of providing a significant amount of isolation has been the use of multiple stage stacks of alternating layers of dense material (metal) and elastic material (rubber). In this work finite element analysis is used to model stack systems in a relatively realistic way, allowing the importance of cross coupling of degrees of freedom to be evaluated. It becomes clear that care has to be taken with the geometrical construction in order to achieve the isolation predicted by simple dynamical analysis.