International Journal of Safety and Security Engineering Vol. 10, No. 1, February, 2020, pp. 113-121 Journal homepage: http://iieta.org/journals/ijsse A Shape Memory Alloy-Pendulum Damping System for Small Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, China Tao Yang1*, Deming Liu1, Yang Liu1, Sheliang Wang2, Binbin Li2 1 School of Urban Planning and Municipal Engineering, Xi'an Polytechnic University, Xi'an 710048, China 2 School of Civil Engineering, Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi'an 710055, China Corresponding Author Email:
[email protected] https://doi.org/10.18280/ijsse.100115 ABSTRACT Received: 7 July 2019 This paper aims to develop a system to control the vibrations of ancient pagodas without Accepted: 21 November 2019 damaging their original appearance. Taking the Small Wild Goose (SWG) Pagoda (Xi’an, Shaanxi Province) as the target structure, the authors designed a shape memory alloy- Keywords: pendulum damping system (SMA-PDS) based on the theory of pendulum damping and the seismic response, shaking table test, super elasticity of the SMA. To verify the effect of the SMA-PDS, a 1:10 scale model was shape memory alloy (SMA), pendulum created for the SWG Pagoda, and subjected to shaking table tests with and without the SMA- damping PDS. The test results indicate that: the small and flexible system can be installed easily inside the pagoda to dampen seismic vibrations; the SMA-PDS greatly reduced the acceleration response at the top of the SWG Pagoda model; the reduction is particularly prominent (32.5%), when the SMA wires had a pre-strain of 3%; the SMA-PDS worked better in medium and large earthquakes than in small earthquakes.