A new energy-based method for evaluating the damping properties of cable-damper systems

External dampers and cross-ties are commonly used to control vibrations of stay cables on cable-stayed bridges. While dampers contribute directly to the structural damping of the attached cables, cross-ties mainly help to increase the stiffness of the connected cable system. The idea of incorporating cross-ties with dampers has also been attempted in a few recent applications to benefit from their combined effect. A new energy-based method is proposed in the current study to evaluate the damping properties of a cable-damper system. The proposed method overcomes the weaknesses and limitations in the previous studies; and its validation is verified through prior work. Parametric studies are done to investigate the effect of some parameters on damping properties of a cable-damper system. Also, studies are conducted to investigate the combined effect of a damper and cross-ties. The conversion method which links the effect of the external damper in a cable-damper system to the equivalent Rayleigh damping of a single cable system is presented, which should be of significant interest to bridge design engineers.