Abstract
The buckling and post buckling behaviors of the short superelastic shape memory alloy (SMA) columns under repeated loading-unloading cycles are observed by experiment. It is found that for the first cycle the SMA column with slenderness ratio (L/k=28) shows two distinct modes of deformation and its failure load is higher than that of SUS304 column. Whereas, SMA column with L/k=38 shows two distinct peak loads. For each cycle, the SMA column can sustain much more deformation before failure compared to the SUS304 and Al columns. Compared to SUS304 columns, the cumulative residual strains are lower but the buckling loads are higher for the SMA columns after 2-3 cycles.
