As a practical and effective seismic resisting technology, base isolation has seen extensive applications in both buildings and bridges.However, a few problems associated with conventional lead-rubber bearing have been identified after historical strong earthquakes, e.g.excessive permanent deformations of bearings and potential unseating of bridge decks.Recently the applications of shape memory alloy (SMA) for seismic response modification have attracted increasing interest, and a variety of SMA base isolators has been developed [1, 2].These novel isolators often lead to minimal permanent deformations due to the superior self-centering capacity of SMA materials [3].