Various shape memory alloy (SMA) dampers have been developed to reduce structural vibration responses. However, the application of SMA dampers has been restricted by the high material costs of SMAs. Therefore, this study developed and tested an innovative SMA damping inerter (SDI) in which an SMA element and an inerter element were arranged in parallel and deployed in series with a supporting spring element. A single-degree-of-freedom structure with an SDI was employed to analyze the effect of vibration mitigation. A theoretical analysis was conducted via an equivalent linearization method, and parameter studies were then used to evaluate the performance of the SDI-fitted structure from perspectives of structural displacement, acceleration, and energy dissipation as well as the most efficient frequency tuning bandwidth. The performances of the SDI and a conventional SMA damper were compared by using a timedomain analysis with recorded and simulated ground motions, revealing clearly superior results for the SDI with respect to structural response mitigation, and seismic energy dissipation. The system proposed here took advantage of the full potential of combining SMA and inerter elements, making the SDI a robust system for mitigating structural vibration with more economical SMA material costs.
A shape memory alloy damping inerter (SDI) with an SMA placed in parallel with an inerter and then in serial with a spring was developed as a vibration control device, where the inerter is utilized to amplify the deformation of SMA to improve the energy dissipation capacity. However, SDI can have other mechanical layouts when an SMA, an inerter and a spring are involved, which may exhibit different control effectiveness. Moreover, explicit design methods aiming to achieve the optimal performance of the SDI systems remain unexplored. In this study, SDIs with different mechanical layouts are proposed and compared, and design method for the SDI-equipped structure is developed. Firstly, the mechanical model of a structure with SDI systems is separately established. Parametric analysis is then conducted in terms of the displacement response, acceleration response and damping enhancement effect. Selection for appropriate SDI mechanical layout can be identified based on parametric analysis results. Additionally, design method based on maximizing the damping enhancement effect to fully develop the energy dissipation capacity of the SMA under the target structural response mitigation ratio is proposed. The performance of the optimal designed SDI-equipped structures is finally evaluated in the time-domain. Results show that both the displacement and acceleration responses of the SDI-equipped structures can be effectively mitigated by using the proposed optimal design method. Among the optimized SDI systems, the energy dissipation capacity of SMA is almost similar. Different SDI systems differ in the energy dissipation characteristic. The SMA-spring-paralleled SDI exhibits minimum damping force, indicating a better damping enhancement effect and less material demand of SMA than the other SDI systems.
Shape memory alloy (SMA) dampers are widely investigated passive control systems for structural vibration mitigation. However, the damping robustness of conventional austenite SMA dampers may be affected by environmental temperature. In this study, an innovative double SMA damper (DSD) system is presented to improve the temperature robustness of the SMA dampers. In the proposed system, double SMA hysteretic elements with different phase transition temperatures are arranged in parallel, where the SMA element with lower transition temperature behaves as austenite under room temperature, and the other with higher transition temperature behaves as martensite. To study the vibration control effect, both single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) and multiple-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) structures with DSD systems are employed. The thermal and mechanical behaviors of the SMA elements and the working principle of DSD are also introduced. Thereon, the equivalent linearization method for SMA’s output force and the motion-governing equations for SDOF structure with DSD are derived. Moreover, parametric studies are conducted to investigate the performance of the proposed DSD system in both frequency and time domains. Also, numerical analysis for the MDOF structure with DSD systems is carried out to illustrate the trend in response reduction with an increasing number of degrees of freedom. The analytical results show that the DSD can mitigate the structural seismic response more effectively than the conventional one with acceptable residual deformation, and is capable of delaying the degradation of SMA’s energy dissipation capacity. Less SMA material is required for the proposed DSD to fulfill the same mitigation requirement, and it is suitable for general applications for temperature robustness.
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