• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.615-626
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• 2019

Inerter-based damping devices (IBBDs), which consist of inerter, spring and viscous damper, have been extensively investigated in vehicle suspension systems and demonstrated to be more effective than the traditional control devices with spring and viscous damper only. In the present study, the control performance on cable vibration reduction was studied for four different inerter-based damping devices, namely the parallel-connected viscous mass damper (PVMD), series-connected viscous mass damper (SVMD), tuned inerter dampers (TID) and tuned viscous mass damper (TVMD). Firstly the mechanism of the ball screw inerter is introduced. Then the state-space formulation of the cable-TID system is derived as an example for the cable-IBBDs system. Based on the complex modal analysis, single-mode cable vibration control analysis is conducted for PVMD, SVMD, TID and TVMD, and their optimal parameters and the maximum attainable damping ratios of the cable/damper system are obtained for several specified damper locations and modes in combination by the Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm. Lastly, optimal design of PVMD is developed for multi-mode vibration control of cable, and the results of damping ratio analysis are validated through the forced vibration analysis in a case study by numerical simulation. The results show that all the four inerter-based damping devices significantly outperform the viscous damper for single-mode vibration control. In the case of multi-mode vibration control, PVMD can provide more damping to the first four modes of cable than the viscous damper does, and their maximum control forces under resonant frequency of harmonic forced vibration are nearly the same. The results of this study clearly demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of PVMD in cable vibration control.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.6
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• pp.709-724
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• 2020

The typical inerter system, the tuned viscous mass damper (TVMD), has been proven to be efficient. It is characterized by an energy-dissipation-enhancement effect, whereby the dashpot deformation of TVMD can be amplified for enhanced energy dissipation efficiency. However, existing studies related to TVMD have mainly been performed on elastic structures, so the working mechanism remains unclear for nonlinear structures. To deal with this, an energy-spectrum analysis framework is developed systematically for classic bilinear hysteretic structures with TVMD. Considering the soil effect, typical bedrock records are propagated through the soil deposit, for which the designed input energy spectra are proposed by considering the TVMD parameters and structural nonlinear properties. Furthermore, the energy-dissipation-enhancement effect of TVMD is quantitatively evaluated for bilinear hysteretic structures. The results show that the established designed input energy spectra can be employed to evaluate the total energy-dissipation burden for a nonlinear TVMD structure. Particularly, the stiffness of TVMD is the dominant factor in adjusting the total input energy. Compared with the case of elastic structures, the energy-dissipation-enhancement effect of TVMD for nonlinear structures is weakened so that the expected energy-dissipation effect of TVMD is replaced by the accumulated energy dissipation of the primary structure.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.72 no.6
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• pp.747-762
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• 2019

Based on the ball-screw mechanism, a tuned viscous mass damper (TVMD) has been proposed, which has functions of amplifying physical mass of the system and frequency tuning. Considering the sensitivity of a single TVMD's effectiveness to frequency mistuning like that of the conventional tuned mass damper (TMD) and according to the concept of the conventional multiple tuned mass damper (MTMD), in the present paper, multiple tuned mass viscous dampers (MTVMD) consisting of many tuned mass dampers (TVMD) with a uniform distribution of natural frequencies are considered for attenuating undesirable vibration of a structure. The MTVMD is manufactured by keeping the stiffness and damping constant and varying the mass associated with the lead of the ball-screw type inerter element in the damper. The structure is represented by its mode-generalized system in a specific vibration mode controlled using the mode reduced-order method. Modal properties and fundamental characteristics of the MTVMD-structure system are investigated analytically with the parameters, i.e., the frequency band, the average damping ratio, the tuning frequency ratio, the total number of TVMD and the total mass ratio. It is found that there exists an optimum set of the parameters that makes the frequency response curve of the structure flattened with smaller amplitudes in a wider input frequency range. The effectiveness and robustness of the MTVMD are also discussed in comparison with those of the usual single TVMD (STVMD) and the results shows that the MTVMD is more effective and robust with the same level of total mass.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.589-613
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• 2019

Cables are prone to vibration due to their low inherent damping characteristics. Recently, negative stiffness dampers have gained attentions, because of their promising energy dissipation ability. The viscous inertial mass damper (termed as VIMD hereinafter) can be viewed as one realization of the inerter. It is formed by paralleling an inertial mass part with a common energy dissipation element (e.g., viscous element) and able to provide pseudo-negative stiffness properties to flexible systems such as cables. A previous study examined the potential of IMD to enhance the damping of stay cables. Because there are already models for common energy dissipation elements, the key to establish a general model for IMD is to propose an analytical model of the rotary mass component. In this paper, the characteristics of the rotary mass and the proposed analytical model have been evaluated by the numerical and experimental tests. First, a series of harmonic tests are conducted to show the performance and properties of the IMD only having the rotary mass. Then, the mechanism of nonlinearities is analyzed, and an analytical model is introduced and validated by comparing with the experimental data. Finally, a real-time hybrid simulation test is conducted with a physical IMD specimen and cable numerical substructure under distributed sinusoidal excitation. The results show that the chosen model of the rotary mass part can provide better estimation on the damper's performance, and it is better to use it to form a general analytical model of IMD. On the other hand, the simplified damper model is accurate for the preliminary simulation of the cable responses.