Preliminary evaluation of viscous damper between tower and bridge girder

Abstract

This note describes the preliminary evaluation of the viscous damper between tower and bridge girder. By releasing the lateral constraint of the bridge girder at the tower and in the back spans, the bridge girder can vibrate at the tower position. This allows for dashpots to be positioned at the connection to the tower, to introduce linear damping in the system. Thus, the critical damping of the longest transverse eigenmodes can be increased in order to ensure that (i) parametric resonance is avoided and (ii) the resonant swell response is limited.