Design and Experimental Investigation on a New Type of SMA-Fluid Viscous Damper

In this paper, a new type of shape memory alloy (SMA)-fluid viscous damper (SFVD) which consists of pre-tensioned superelastic SMA wires and silicone oil viscous damper (SOVD) is proposed, designed and manufactured. The most important property of the damper is the integration with stable large energy dissipation capacity provided SOVD and superelastic SMA wire, and recentring features profited from the superelastic pre-tensioned SMA wires. Experiments were carried out in order to investigate the mechanical behaviors of the damper which is a function of loading frequency and displacement amplitude. The mechanical model of the SFVD was performed by means of one-dimensional continuous pseudo-elastic hysteretic model of SMA. The numerical simulation for the mechanical behavior of SFVD was performed. The results show that the damper has both the energy dissipating and recentring features with the hysteretic loop under cyclic loading-unloading. The theoretical model matches well with the experimental data, which verifies the correctness of the theoretical model.