Hysteretic tuned mass dampers for structural vibration mitigation

The hysteresis exhibited by short steel wire ropes is shown to lend itself as an effective restoring force for nonlinear monodirectional tuned mass dampers. Experiment-driven modeling based on the identified hysteretic restoring forces together with continuation tools enables an optimal design of these dampers through construction of families of frequency–response curves over a wide range of excitation amplitudes. Semi-analytical/numerical and experimental studies are carried out considering a base-excited test structure represented by a simply supported beam together with a prototype of the hysteretic damper subject to either harmonic or filtered Gaussian white noise excitations.