THE INVESTIGATION ON MECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF A NEW-TYPE SELF-CENTERING VISCOELASTIC DAMPING BRACE

A new-type self-centering viscoelastic damping brace (SCVEDB) is proposed, in which the tensile deformation of shape memory alloy (SMA) and the shear deformation of viscoelastic material (VEM) are used to dissipate energy together, and the superelastic property of SMA is used to recenter. The most basic model of this new-type SCVEDB was designed and fabricated. The mechanical properties of the SCVEDB specimen under cyclic loading were tested. The effects of displacement amplitude, loading rate, number of SMA wires, and thickness of VEM on the performance of SCVEDB were investigated. The four parameters such as secant stiffness, dissipated energy, equivalent damping ratio and self-centering ratio are adopted to quantify the mechanical properties of SCVEDB. The cyclic tensile loading tests of SMA wires are also conducted to validate the proposed numerical model for SMA via OpenSees platform. And this model is paralleled further with the Bouc-Wen model for VEM to build the mechanical model to simulate the mechanical properties of the SCVEDB numerically. The numerical simulation results agree well with the experimental ones.