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Assessing the stability of individual isolators is an important consideration for the design of seismic isolation systems composed of elastomeric bearings. A key component for the stability assessment is the prediction of the critical load capacity of the individual bearings in the laterally undeformed (service) configuration and at a given lateral displacement (seismic). The current procedure for estimating the critical load capacity of an elastomeric bearing at a given lateral displacement, with a bolted connection detail, uses a ratio of areas to reduce the critical load capacity from that in the laterally undeformed configuration, referred to as the reduced area method. Although the reduced area method provides a simple means for the estimate, it lacks a rigorous theoretical basis and is unable to capture the trends observed from experimental data. In this study, the capability of two analytical models for predicting critical loads …