An Innovative Shape Memory Alloy Damper for Passive Control of Structures Subjected to Seismic Excitations

Abstract eng:
An innovative re-centering damping device is presented. Being configurated simply, the device comprises two functional groups of superelastic SMA strands, i.e. the un-pre-tensioned strands and the pre-tensioned strands, resulting in a perfect energy dissipation compatible with a negligible residual displacement. Extensive experiments are carried out to investigate the influence of displacement amplitude and loading frequency on the mechanical behaviors of the device. While increasing the displacement amplitude, the secant stiffness reduces considerably, the energy loss increases, and the equivalent damping exhibits the maximum value at moderate displacement amplitude. The energy dissipation and the equivalent damping decrease with the increasing frequency, but the secant stiffness seems not much sensitive to frequency. Shaking table tests of a two-story steel frame demonstrate that the device not only can reduce the inter-story displacement of the structure subjected to earthquakes, but also can eliminate the residual displacement after excitations.

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