Vibration mitigation of a stay cable with one shape memory alloy damper

The paper investigates the vibration mitigation of a stay cable provided with one shape memory alloy (SMA) damper, which dissipates energy through its superelastic behavior. The closed-form solution of the additional equivalent modal damping ratio to the stay cable by the SMA damper is theoretically analyzed, which indicates the relationships of the additional equivalent modal damping ratio and both the parameters and the locations of the SMA damper when the stay cable–SMA damper system vibrates with only a single mode. The responses and the additional equivalent modal damping ratios of the stay cable with one SMA damper attached at different locations subjected to harmonic excitation in plane are also calculated with single-mode vibration only and with coupled multi-mode vibration. The analytical results show that the SMA damper can mitigate the vibration of the cable significantly and the control effectiveness is influenced by SMA damper parameters and locations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.