Inerter-based seismic control of cable-stayed bridges under transverse excitation

Cable-stayed bridges provide an efficient infrastructural solution due to their ability to span long distances and their structural slenderness. Nevertheless, in the common floating-deck arrangement, these systems may experience significant damage under strong seismic excitations, caused by excessive transverse displacements and potential impacts between the deck and the towers. In the transverse direction, seismic protection is commonly achieved by linking the tower and the deck using passive control devices including viscous or metallic dampers. Studies have further shown that coupling a dissipator with a negative stiffness element enhances motion and energy dissipation, suggesting the potential benefits of hybrid devices combining dampers and inerters. The present study investigates the transverse vibration control of cable-stayed bridges under seismic loading using a novel Inerter-Based Dissipator (IBD) configuration. A simplified dynamic model is proposed to capture the bridge’s transverse response, while the optimal device parameters are obtained by representing ground motion as a filtered Gaussian stochastic process and accounting for damper nonlinearities via the Stochastic Linearization Technique. The effectiveness of the proposed configuration in reducing the transverse relative displacement between the deck and the tower is assessed on a fan-type cable-stayed bridge, demonstrating its superior performance compared to the conventional solution employing viscous dampers.