Hysteretic tuned mass dampers for structural vibration mitigation

•Hysteretic absorbers made of steel wire ropes and clamped moving masses are proposed.•Absorbers with softening or softening-hardening hysteretic forces are analyzed.•Superior performance is shown for absorbers with softening-hardening hysteresis.•High vibration reduction is proved experimentally for a simply supported beam.

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.