Evaluation of the Seismic Behavior of Steel Braced Frames Equipped with Shape Memory Alloy (SMAs)

چکیده مقاله

The steel braced frames are among the essential lateral load-carrying systems that can not be easily repaired after immersive lateral loads such as earthquakes. The maintenance and repairing cost of the steel braced frames are high enough to convince researchers to find a more cost-effective alternative. Utilizing smart materials such as shape memoryalloys (SMAs) can be one of the responses. The SMAs have the recentring features that cause a structure to return to its original shape after unloading. In this paper, numerical models of a 2D three-floor steel braced frame equipped with small segments of SMAs were constructed in the SeismoStruct software. The models were investigated under dynamic time-history analyses, and the related results such as residual displacements, story drift, and hysteresis curves were obtained. The results showed that utilizing a small part of SMAs in braces can reduce the residual displacements and absorb more energy in the SMA-equipped frames.