An Empirical Formulation for the Damping Ratio of Shape Memory Alloy for Base-Isolated Structures

Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) are now widely used as a damping element into the isolation systems. The pre-stressed SMAs exhibit hysteretic damping through a nonlinear flag-shaped hysteresis loop. Many nonlinear models of the SMA are available to depict such behavior. The nonlinear models require a lot of effort and computational time for the analysis of base-isolated structures. Therefore, the codes recommend that a nonlinear model can be replaced by an equivalent linear model in the analysis. Linearization is a method to convert the nonlinearity of a system into a system with analogues linear parameters. This paper proposes an empirical equation for a damping ratio to get a linear damping coefficient of the SMAs which can be used in the seismic analysis of base-isolated structures.

The evaluation of any damping ratio using the traditional system identification method does not give precise solutions due to variation in hysteretic parameters and the unpredictable nature of an earthquake. The empirical equation is proposed using a set of optimal statistical data obtained from the seismic analysis of a base isolated structure. Moreover, analysis of the base isolated structure using the newly modified equivalent elastic-viscous SMA model gives comparable and conservative results with a nonlinear SMA model as compared to the existing elastic-viscous SMA model. Since the hysteresis parameters are used to derive the empirical equation for the damping ratio, this equation is also applicable for any type of structure.