Title: Assessment of damper performance in controlling cable vibrations using a reliability-based framework

Authors: Seyed Ali Mohammadi; Shaohong Cheng; Faouzi Ghrib

Addresses: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Ave., Windsor, Ontario, N9B 3P4, Canada ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Ave., Windsor, Ontario, N9B 3P4, Canada ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Ave., Windsor, Ontario, N9B 3P4, Canada

Abstract: Owing to their long flexible nature and low intrinsic damping, bridge stay cables are prone to various types of wind-induced vibrations, among which the rain-wind-induced vibration is most frequently observed on site. External dampers are widely used to control such unfavourable cable oscillations and their effectiveness in suppressing large-amplitude cable vibrations was addressed in many studies using deterministic approaches. However, the mechanical and/or physical properties of cables and the attached dampers could not only deviate from their respective nominal design values at a given design point, but also vary considerably during the lifetime of a cable-stayed bridge and thus affect damper efficiency. Hence, for a realistic damper performance assessment, these uncertainties should be taken into account. The objective of this paper is to present a time-variant reliability-based framework model to assess how uncertainties in the structural parameters of a cable-damper system would influence the time specific reliability performance of an external damper yielded from the current design practice.

Keywords: vibration control; bridge stay cables; time-variant reliability analysis; limit state function; rain-wind-induced vibration; damper performance; cable vibrations; cable oscillations; uncertainties; design practice; structural parameters; bridges.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTRUCTE.2017.081670

International Journal of Structural Engineering, 2017 Vol.8 No.1, pp.32 - 59

Received: 19 Mar 2016
Accepted: 15 Aug 2016

Published online: 19 Jan 2017 *

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