SUMMARY
A modified base‐isolated design strategy is proposed and shown to effectively protect precision machinery system against extreme earthquakes. Preliminary presumed range of design parameter in base‐isolated machinery systems could be narrowed down via entropy‐based classification (EBC) by finding an appropriate cutting point for a proper design range. The designs for the modified parametric ranges through EBC effectively raise isolator's energy‐absorbing ability. However, in this pervious work, when all the possible cases are considered to modify the designs of the base‐isolated system, the examined parametric ranges might be a little large. If only one cutting point from EBC is used, some uncertainties in a large parametric range could make imprecise design strategies. Accordingly, modified EBC (MEBC) is introduced in this study for finding more cutting points. Simply speaking, MEBC is the use of EBC more than once. However, some additional limitations must be redefined for EBC to reduce the influence of uncertainty data. A case study is practically presented in this study. Designs for a lead rubber bearing's base‐isolated machinery model located at Central Science Park in Taiwan are made. Ten excitations of Chi‐Chi earthquake from different stations nearby the park are considered. In the results, they are verified that appropriate design strategies from MEBC could raise isolator's energy‐absorbing ability and lower machinery's maximum deformation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.