SMA-based smart rubber bearings will have many advantages,
such as stability, re-centering capability, high energy dissipation
capacity and long service life. They not only will mitigate the seismic
response of structures in terms of acceleration, displacement
and internal forces but will also have superior performance in
terms of fatigue property and energy dissipation capacity compared
to those of existing rubber bearings [15].
In the present study, SMA wires are used as a supplementary
element to improve the performance of a fiber-reinforced high
damping rubber bearing in terms of the residual deformation.
The main concern about the SMA wire is the maximum superelastic
strain under large shear strains of rubber bearings. Two configurations
of wires are compared by changing different factors, such
as the type of SMA and the aspect ratio of rubber bearing. In this
regard, seven carbon FRP-based high damping rubber bearings
(CFR-HDRB) are considered with different aspect ratios (R). Their
geometrical properties are listed in Table 1.
The thickness of the elastomer layer, te, is kept constant
(4.7 mm in all cases), while the number of high damping rubber
layers, ne, increases from 6 to 18.