Abstract: In the wake of damaging earthquakes in both the United States and Japan over the past year, the performance of structures, in addition to traditional life-safety concerns, has become an important issue for designers and owners. Many possible approaches to enhancing the seismic performance of structures have been proposed, and one promising family of solutions which is receiving attention today is passive damping devices. The work presented here is part of an ongoing experimental and analytical study of the applicability of one particular type of damping device for controlling the response of civil structures. Two different types of reduced-scale dampers using shape memory alloys have been tested over a range of strain amplitudes, loading frequencies, and temperatures. The purpose of the tests was to thoroughly characterize an alloy and examine variations in device design and installation configurations that could lead to a number of different hysteretic shapes. The ultimate behavior of the devices was also examined. Parallel to the device development and testing, a series of analyses of a steel frame building incorporating shape memory alloys has been undertaken to quantify the benefits of using these devices in an actual structure. Preliminary results of these analyses are presented. !9
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