Compound damping cable system for vibration control of high-rise structures

High-rise structures prone to large vibrations under the action of strong winds, resulting in fatigue damage of the structural components and the foundation. A novel compound damping cable system (CDCS) is proposed to suppress the excessive vibrations. CDCS uses tailored double cable system with increased tensile stiffness as the connecting device, and makes use of the relative motion between the high-rise structure and the ground to drive the damper to move back-and-forth, dissipating the vibration mechanical energy of the high-rise structure so as to decaying the excessive vibration. Firstly, a third-order differential equation for the free vibration of high-rise structure with CDCS is established, and its closed form solution is obtained by the root formulas of cubic equation (Shengjin's formulas). Secondly, the analytical solution is validated by a laboratory model experiment. Thirdly, parametric analysis is conducted to investigate how the parameters affect the vibration control performance. Finally, the dynamic responses of the high-rise structure with CDCS under harmonic and stochastic excitations are calculated and its vibration mitigation performance is further evaluated. The results show that the CDCS can provide a large equivalent additional damping ratio for the vibrating structures, thus suppressing the excessive vibration effectively. It is anticipated that the CDCS can be used as a good alternative energy dissipation system for vibration control of high-rise structures.