Damping Performance of Taut Cables with Passive Absorbers Incorporating Inerters

Abstract

As stay cables are prone to vibrations due to their low inherent damping, a common method to limit unwanted vibrations is to install a viscous damper normal to the cable near one of its supports. This paper investigates the potential performance improvement that can be delivered by a numbers of candidate absorbers that incorporate inerters. The inerter device is the true network dual of a spring, with the property that the force is proportional to the relative acceleration between its two terminals. A finite element taut cable model is used for this study. A specific cost function indicating the damping performance of a cable with an absorber attached is proposed. An optimisation of the performance is then carried out. Based on optimisation results, the best damping performance for each of the candidate absorber structures against a specific range of inertance values is presented.