Semi-active damping with negative stiffness for multi-mode cable vibration mitigation: approximate collocated control solution

This paper derives an approximate collocated control solution for the mitigation of multi-mode cable vibration by semi-active damping with negative stiffness based on the control force characteristics of clipped linear quadratic regulator (LQR). The control parameters are derived from optimal modal viscous damping and corrected in order to guarantee that both the equivalent viscous damping coefficient and the equivalent stiffness coefficient of the semi-active cable damper force are equal to their desired counterparts. The collocated control solution with corrected control parameters is numerically validated by free decay tests of the first four cable modes and combinations of these modes. The results of the single-harmonic tests demonstrate that the novel approach yields 1.86 times more cable damping than optimal modal viscous damping and 1.87 to 2.33 times more damping compared to a passive oil damper whose viscous damper coefficient is optimally tuned to the targeted mode range of the first four modes. The improvement in case of the multi-harmonic vibration tests, i.e. when modes 1 and 3 and modes 2 and 4 are vibrating at the same time, is between 1.55 and 3.81. The results also show that these improvements are obtained almost independent of the cable anti-node amplitude. Thus, the proposed approximate real-time applicable collocated semi-active control solution which can be realized by magnetorheological dampers represents a promising tool for the efficient mitigation of stay cable vibrations.