Experimental investigations of building structure with a superelastic shape memory alloy friction damper subject to seismic loads

With the goal to assess its effectiveness in structural vibration suppression under strong seismic excitations, this paper experimentally investigates shaking table tests of a new superelastic shape memory alloy friction damper (SSMAFD). The damper consists of pre-tensioned superelastic shape memory alloy (SMA) wires and friction devices. The main function of SMA wires is to provide re-centering capacity, while the integrated friction devices provide the most energy dissipation. With the inherent damping property, the superelastic SMA wires also provide energy dissipation. In the shaking table tests, a scaled-down building structure were used as the subject for vibration control and several representative seismic signals as well as white noise motions were used as the inputs. Comparative studies of dynamic behaviors, i.e. story displacements, interstory drifts and story accelerations, of the structural model with and without SSMAFD under seismic loading were performed. The experimental results demonstrated that the SSMAFD was effective in suppressing the dynamic response of the building structure subjected to strong earthquakes by dissipating a large portion of the energy. In addition, with the re-centering capacity of the proposed damper, the structure was able to undergo strong earthquakes without remarkable residual drift under different seismic loads.