Experimental and numerical vibration analysis of wire rope isolators under quasi-static and dynamic loadings

Wire rope isolators have applications for vibration isolation in many industrial machinery and precise equipment. In this paper, the dynamic characteristics of an industrial wire rope isolator are investigated. A series of experiments were carried out on the isolator for quasi-static and dynamic loadings. Both horizontal and vertical excitations were considered. Next, a modified Bouc-Wen model was used to predict the behavior of the wire rope isolator under quasi-static loads. To have a comprehensive model able to predict the behavior of the isolator in all loading conditions, an artificial neural network model was proposed. The model was trained with a set of data and after convergence; it was used for prediction of some experimental cases which were not used in the training process. The obtained results indicate that the neural network model can predict the hysteresis behavior of the wire rope isolator with a good degree of accuracy.