Vibrations of an aramid anchor cable subjected to turbulent wind

• Vibration response of the aramid cable excited by a turbulent wind is presented.
• Characteristics of the selected in situ measured wind records are described.
• Simulations of wind histories are generated using developed WindSimul software.
• A transient dynamic analysis is used to study the cable behaviour after relaxation.
• Attractors and Poincaré maps are created and interesting findings are presented.

The vibration response of an initially pre-stressed anchor cable made of parallel-lay aramid fibres excited by a measured and artificially simulated spatial turbulent wind field is presented in the paper. Results of the analyses of in situ measured wind records are described. For selected data set statistical characteristics and power spectral density functions of the measured wind velocity components are calculated. The wind stochastic velocity fluctuation is modelled as a one-variate bi-dimensional random field. Cross-power spectral density functions, at different point locations are introduced. The combination of the weighted amplitude wave superposition method (WAWS) with the Shinozuka–Deodatis method is used for the analyzed problem. A time-dependent behaviour of the synthetic cable is investigated which is subjected to turbulent wind with large expected oscillations that arise as a result of slackening due to the relaxation effects. A nonlinear transient dynamic analysis is used in conjunction with the finite element method to determine the dynamic response of the cable subjected to turbulent wind at its initially prestressed state and in the selected times after the relaxation effect. The constitutive equation of the relaxation of the aramid cable follows an experimentally obtained law of the logarithmic type. To monitor the dependences of the individual quantities of cable vibration in the phase space, attractors and Poincaré maps are created by sampling the cable’s displacement and velocity at periods of relevant frequencies. Interesting findings based on the response of the cable with rheological properties to turbulent wind are presented.