• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제30권1호
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• pp.89-106
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• 2022

The negative stiffness of an active or semi-active damper system has been proven to be very effective in reducing dynamic response. Therefore, energy dissipation devices possessing negative stiffness, such as viscous inertial mass dampers (VIMDs), have drawn much attention recently. The control performance of the VIMD for cable vibration mitigation has already been demonstrated by many researchers. In this paper, a new optimal design procedure for VIMD parameters for taut cable vibration control is presented based on the fixed-points method originally developed for tuned mass damper design. A model consisting of a taut cable and a VIMD installed near a cable end is studied. The frequency response function (FRF) of the cable under a sinusoidal load distributed proportionally to the mode shape is derived. Then, the fixed-points method is applied to the FRF curves. The performance of a VIMD with the optimal parameters is subsequently evaluated through simulations. A taut cable model with a tuned VIMD is established for several cases of external excitation. The performance of VIMDs using the proposed optimal parameters is compared with that in the literature. The results show that cable vibration can be significantly reduced using the proposed optimal VIMD with a relatively small amount of damping. Multiple VIMDs are applied effectively to reduce the cable vibration with multi-modal components.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제23권6호
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• pp.627-639
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• 2019

Passive control may not provide enough damping for a stay cable since the control devices are often restricted to a low location level. In order to enhance control performance of conventional passive dampers, a new type of damper integrated with a rotary electromagnetic damper providing variable damping force and a flywheel serving as an inertial mass, called the rotary electromagnetic inertial mass damper (REIMD), is presented for suppressing the cable vibrations in this paper. The mechanical model of the REIMD is theoretically derived according to generation mechanisms of the damping force and the inertial force, and further validated by performance tests. General dynamic characteristics of an idealized taut cable with a REIMD installed close to the cable end are theoretically investigated, and parametric analysis are then conducted to investigate the effects of inertial mass and damping coefficient on vibration control performance. Finally, vibration control tests on a scaled cable model with a REIMD are performed to further verify mitigation performance through the first two modal additional damping ratios of the cable. Both the theoretical and experimental results show that control performance of the cable with the REIMD are much better than those of conventional passive viscous dampers, which mainly attributes to the increment of the damper displacement due to the inertial mass induced negative stiffness effects of the REIMD. Moreover, it is concluded that both inertial mass and damping coefficient of an optimum REIMD will decrease with the increase of the mode order of the cable, and oversize inertial mass may lead to negative effect on the control performance.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제23권6호
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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.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제24권1호
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• pp.83-94
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• 2019

Passive negative stiffness dampers (NSDs) that possess superior energy dissipation abilities, have been proved to be more efficient than commonly adopted passive viscous dampers in controlling stay cable vibrations. Recently, inertial mass dampers (IMDs) have attracted extensive attentions since their properties are similar to NSDs. It has been theoretically predicted that superior supplemental damping can be generated for a taut cable with an IMD. This paper aims to theoretically investigate the impact of the cable sag on the efficiency of an IMD in controlling stay cable vibrations, and experimentally validate superior vibration mitigation performance of the IMD. Both the numerical and asymptotic solutions were obtained for an inclined sag cable with an IMD installed close to the cable end. Based on the asymptotic solution, the cable attainable maximum modal damping ratio and the corresponding optimal damping coefficient of the IMD were derived for a given inertial mass. An electromagnetic IMD (EIMD) with adjustable inertial mass was developed to investigate the effects of inertial mass and cable sag on the vibration mitigation performance of two model cables with different sags through series of first modal free vibration tests. The results show that the sag generally reduces the attainable first modal damping ratio of the cable with a passive viscous damper, while tends to increase the cable maximum attainable modal damping ratio provided by the IMD. The cable sag also decreases the optimum damping coefficient of the IMD when the inertial mass is less than its optimal value. The theoretically predicted first modal damping ratio of the cable with an IMD, taking into account the sag generally, agrees well with that identified from experimental results, while it will be significantly overestimated with a taut-cable model, especially for the cable with large sag.