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To investigate vibration control effects of a tuned mass damper (TMD) on the monopile offshore wind turbine tower under wind‐wave excitations and seismic excitations, shaking table tests on a 1/13‐scaled test model equipped with or without TMD are implemented. The TMD device adopted in the test is a bidirectional TMD whose mass ratio and frequency ratio are properly designed. During the test, the model identification of wind turbine model is conducted via white noise sweep. Furthermore, the influence of aerodynamic damping generated by blade rotation on the dynamic responses of a monopile offshore wind turbine is analyzed. Additionally, the vibration control effects of TMD under different rotation speeds of the blades and various external excitations are intensively studied. Based on the test results, the seismic responses of a monopile offshore wind turbine attached with/without TMD are also analyzed by the finite element software ANSYS. It has been found that the results obtained by numerical simulation fit well to the results derived from the experimental tests, showing that the numerical simulation method proposed in this paper is feasible with satisfactory accuracy. Both experimental and numerical researches conducted in this work are conducive to the further application of TMD to offshore wind turbines that are situated in seismic active regions. It should be noted that the investigated time‐histories cannot give a generalized result regarding the real performance of the TMD under wind‐wave excitations. The documented results can only support an overview about the tendency of the TMD efficiency.

To accurately predict the optimum supplemental modal damping ratio of the cable and the corresponding size of the inertial mass damper (IMD), combined effects of the cable sag, the cable flexural rigidity, and the boundary conditions on the control performance of the cable with the IMD are well investigated in this refined study. An analytical model of the cable-IMD system considering these effects is developed. The equation of motion of the cable-IMD system is transformed into a complex eigenvalue problem through the finite difference method. Experimental results from a scaled cable model with an IMD are then used to verify theoretical solutions. Three typical cables in actual cable-stayed bridges are selected for case studies. The results show that the theoretically predicted modal damping ratios of the cable with an IMD, taking into account the sag and the flexural rigidity, agree well with those identified from experimental results, while would be often overestimated with a taut-cable model. Moreover, experimental damping ratios of the cable always fall between those theoretically calculated with fixed ends or pinned ends for each case. Finally, to be conservative in actual design, it is recommended to use the cable-IMD system model with fixed ends to calculate the required damper size and predict the resulting modal damping ratio of the cable, since the corresponding theoretical solution often gives the lower bound of supplemental damping ratio of the cable.

Abstract:A new self-powered magnetorheological (MR) damper control system was developed to mitigate cable vibration. The power source of the MR damper is directly harvested from vibration energy through a rotary permanent magnet direct current (DC) generator. The generator itself can also serve as an electromagnetic damper. The proposed smart passive system also incorporates a roller chain and sprocket, transforming the linear motion of the cable into the rotational motion of the DC generator. The vibration mitigation performance of the presented self-powered MR damper system was evaluated by model tests with a 21.6 m long cable. A series of free vibration tests of the cable with a passively operated MR damper with constant voltage, an electromagnetic damper alone, and a self-powered MR damper system were performed. Finally, the vibration control mechanisms of the self-powered MR damper system were investigated. The experimental results indicate that the supplemental modal damping ratios of the cable in the first four modes can be significantly enhanced by the self-powered MR damper system, demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of the new smart passive system. The results also show that both the self-powered MR damper and the generator are quite similar to a combination of a traditional linear viscous damper and a negative stiffness device, and the negative stiffness can enhance the mitigation efficiency against cable vibration.

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Hepatitis E (HE) is a zoonotic viral disease caused by hepatitis E virus (HEV). The objective of this study was to investigate the prevalence of HEV infection among dogs and humans exposed to dogs in the south-west region of China. A total of 4,490 dog serum samples and 2,206 relative practitioner serum samples were collected from 18 pet hospitals and dog farms in Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou province, and the anti-HEV IgG antibodies were detected by ELISA. The results showed that the total positive rate of anti-HEV antibodies was 36.55% with the highest rate in city stray dogs, and the differences in distinct species and growth phases were significant. The positive rate of anti-HEV antibody in veterinarian and farm staff-related practitioners was significantly higher than the general population. The finding of the present survey suggested that high HEV seroprevalence in dogs and humans exposed to dogs in the south-west area of China poses a significant public health concern. It is urgent to improve integrated strategies to detect, prevent and control HEV infection in dogs and humans exposed to dogs in this area.

Recently, inertial mass dampers (IMDs) have shown superior control performance over traditional viscous dampers (VDs) in vibration control of stay cables. However, a single IMD may be incapable of providing sufficient supplemental modal damping to a super-long cable, especially for the multimode cable vibration mitigation. Inspired by the potential advantages of attaching two discrete VDs at different locations of the cable, arranging two external discrete IMDs, either at the opposite ends or the same end of the cable is proposed to further improve vibration mitigation performance of the cable in this study. Complex modal analysis based on the taut-string model was employed and extended to allow for the existence of two external discrete IMDs, resulting in a transcendental equation for complex wavenumbers. Both asymptotic and numerical solutions for the case of two opposite IMDs or the case of two IMDs at the same end of the cable were obtained. Subsequently, the applicability of asymptotic solutions was then evaluated. Finally, parametric studies were performed to investigate the effects of damper positions and damper properties on the control performance of a cable with two discrete IMDs. Results showed that two opposite IMDs can generally provide superior control performance to the cable over a single IMD or two IMDs at the same end. It was also observed that attaching two IMDs at the same end of the cable had the potential to achieve significant damping improvement when the inertial mass of the IMDs is appropriate, which seems to be more promising than two opposite IMDs for practical application.