Experimental Characterization and Phenomenological Modeling of Wire Rope Isolators

Wire rope isolators are devices with non-linear behavior used to reduce vibrations during transportation and operation of machineries. Their hysteretic behavior produces a relevant damping, which guarantees a good mitigation performance without needing further damping devices. Nevertheless, the linear spring-damper model is not able to describe the component behavior. Additionally, mechanical properties provided by the manufacturers are generally partial and limited to equivalent stiffness and damping coefficients. These parameters are good to predict the quasi-static behavior of the spring, such as the deflection under component weight. Nevertheless, they are not suitable to predict the vibrating behavior, to describe the hysteresis cycle, and to predict the actual filtering capabilities. In this chapter, a procedure to experimentally characterize the component behavior is proposed. The obtained experimental data were used to fit a phenomenological model, which is a development of the Bouc-Wen model. The proposed approach was experimentally validated.