Experimental and numerical simulation study on mechanical properties of fiber-reinforced plastic seismic isolator

•Developed a new type of fiber-reinforced seismic isolator with low cost and high-performance features.•Tensile and bending performance tests were conducted on the fiber-reinforced plastic plates.•Evaluated FRP seismic isolators’ mechanical properties, including the vertical compressive performance, horizontal shear performance, ultimate performance, shear strain correlation, compressive stress correlation and loading frequency correlation by mechanical properties tests.•Studied the distributions of horizontal normal stress, vertical normal stress and interfacial shear stress in the isolator by numerical analysis.•Studied the effects of changing the plane size of the FRP seismic isolator and the plate/rubber thickness ratio on the isolator’s performance.