Damping ratio of stay cable attached with viscous damper and high-damping rubber damper

Abstract

An analytical model for assessing the dynamic performance of a taut cable attached with a viscous damper (VD) and a high-damping rubber damper (HDRD) is presented. The cable bending stiffness, which is commonly disregarded in the literature, was considered in this work and it was found that the bending stiffness contributes significantly to the cable's damping ratio. The damping ratio was highest for the first mode and gradually diminished for higher modes. The proposed model establishes a relationship between the damping ratio and damper parameters, including their locations, viscosity coefficients, spring stiffness factors and material loss factors. This enables determination of the optimal parameters of dampers such that maximum value of the total damping ratio of the cable–damper system can be obtained, providing a helpful tool in cable design.