Performance Evaluation of Inerter and Negative Stiffness-Based Dampers for Seismic-Induced Vibration Response Control of a Cable-Stayed Bridge: A Comparative Study

The excessive main girder displacement responses of the large-span cable-stayed bridges during seismic events may precipitate collisions between the main girder and the approach bridge. The viscous dampers (VDs) have been extensively employed in the seismic response control of long-span bridges, yet their effectiveness is limited. To augment the seismic-induced vibration control performance of the VD, inerter element, negative stiffness (NS) element, and spring element have been incorporated into the VD to achieve energy dissipation capacity enhancement. The equations of motion for the simplified cable-stayed bridge-damper systems are established under stochastic seismic excitation, and the design parameters of inerter and NS-based damper are optimized by using the genetic algorithm. The seismic control performance of the VD and five types of dampers are systematically compared, demonstrating that these dampers can substantially enhance the main girder displacement mitigation performance in cable-stayed bridges. Owing to the NS characteristics attributes of the inerter element and NS element and the tuning effect of the spring element, the tuned viscous mass damper (TVMD) with NS achieves a 24.56% higher efficiency in control performance compared to the VD.