Recentering Shape Memory Alloy Passive Damper for Structural Vibration Control

This paper presents a preliminary study on the evaluation of an innovative energy dissipation system with shape memory alloys (SMAs) for structural seismic protection. A recentering shape memory alloy damper (RSMAD), in which superelastic nitinol wires are utilized as energy dissipation components, is proposed. Improved constitutive equations based on Graesser and Cozzarelli model are proposed for superelastic nitinol wires used in the damper. Cyclic tensile-compressive tests on the damper with various prestrain under different loading frequencies and displacement amplitudes were conducted. The results show that the hysteretic behaviors of the damper can be modified to best fit the needs for passive structural control applications by adjusting the pretension of the nitinol wires, and the damper performance is not sensitive to frequencies greater than 0.5 Hz. To assess the effectiveness of the dampers for structural seismic protection, nonlinear time history analysis on a ten-story steel frame with and without the dampers subjected to representative earthquake ground motions was performed. The simulation results indicate that superelastic SMA dampers are effective in mitigating the structural response of building structures subjected to strong earthquakes.