Abstract:Passive control of stay cable using nonlinear friction damper was studied. A friction damper can provide higher additional damping to stay cable than that of a common linear viscous damper. The damping performance of a single degree of freedom system with a friction damper was investigated. The equation of motion of a taut cable with a coulomb friction damper was derived and was solved by using Galerkin formulation. The free vibration attenuation characteristics and the damping performance of the cable with a friction damper were theoretically and numerically investigated. The damping mechanism was discussed. A universal estimation curve was proposed that relates the modal damping ratio of a cable with a friction damper when the effect of various parameters on damping was considered. The results of numerical simulation were compared with those of the experiments, they are in good agreement. The value of a maximum available additional damping was analyzed. The results show that the maximum modal damping ratio of cable with a friction damper is not a fixed value, but a range, the lowest value of which is larger than that of an optimal passive linear viscous damper.
