Analytical and experimental investigation on a multiple-mass-element pendulum impact damper for vibration mitigation

• The dynamics of slender structures with a new type of impact damper is studied.
• A model is derived to describe the interaction of structure and damper.
• A set of dimensionless design parameters is used to study damper performance.
• Comparison of simulations with a full-scale test is carried out.
• Damper parameters are investigated to optimize system performance.

Impact dampers are often used in the field of civil, mechanical and aerospace engineering for reducing structural vibrations. The behavior of this type of passive control device has been investigated for several decades. In this research a distributed-mass impact damper, similar to the “chain damper” used in wind engineering, has been examined and applied to the vibration reduction on a slender line-like structural element (stay-cable). This study is motivated by a practical problem and describes the derivation of a reduced-order model for explaining the behavior, observed during a field experiment on a prototype system. In its simplest form, the dynamics of the apparatus is modeled as a “resilient damper”, composed of mass–spring–dashpot secondary elements, attached to the primary structure. Various sources of excitation are analyzed: free vibration, external harmonic force and random excitation. The proposed model is general and potentially applicable to the analysis of several structural systems. The study also shows that the model can adequately describe and explain the experimentally observed behavior.