Cable vibration control with a semiactive MR damper-numerical simulation and experimental verification

Excessive stay cable vibrations can cause severe problems for cable-stayed bridges. In this paper a semiactive Magnetorheological (MR) damper is investigated to reduce cable vibrations. The control-oriented cable-damper model is first established; a computer simulation for the cable-damper system is carried out; and finally a MR damper is experimentally used to reduce the cable vibration in a laboratory environment using a semiactive control algorithm. Both the simulation and experimental results show that the semiactive MR damper achieves better control results than the corresponding passive damper.