AbstractA producer of base isolation devices made available low damping elastomeric bearings in a size consistent with the shaking table facilities available at the Department of Structural Mechanics of the University of Pavia in Italy. The mass the shaking table can bear is 400 kg. This means that one base isolator is enough as vertical support, but more isolators would provide an excessive horizontal stiffness. Two further supports were realised by a steel‐teflon contact. It showed good sliding capability under a mass of 100 kg, while for the mass of 400 kg a significant friction effect was emphasised. The laboratory tests were able to identify the device behaviour by collecting absolute inertial force/relative displacement couples. The constitutive law is inferred by a genetic algorithm. This aspect is deeply investigate