High-damping rubber damper for taut cable vibration reduction

Stay cables of cable-stayed bridges are vulnerable to dynamic excitation because their intrinsic damping is very low. These components have been exhibiting unanticipated and excessive vibrations which cause frequent maintenance and affect normal operations of the entire bridge. Cable vibration is commonly mitigated by attaching external dampers such as viscous damper, friction damper, magnetorheological damper, etc. This article presents a study on vibration of a taut cable attached with a single high-damping rubber (HDR) damper. Oscillation parameters of the cable-damper system were studied in detail using an analytical formulation of the complex eigenvalue problem. The results of this study provide a useful tool for selecting optimal parameters of an HDR damper for stay cables.