Dynamic analysis of wind-excited truss tower with friction dampers

This paper presents a rational analytical method for determining dynamic response of wind-excited large truss towers installed with friction dampers and investigates the effectiveness of friction dampers. The analytical procedure involves two models of one truss tower: one is the two-dimensional lumped mass dynamic model and the other is the three-dimensional (3D) finite element static model. These two models are alternately used to fulfill control force transformation, displacement increment transformation, and the numerical integration of equations of motion of the coupled damper-tower system. A three-story truss structure under wind excitation is used to validate the proposed bi-model method through the comparison with a precise 3D dynamic analysis. After a satisfactory comparison, a large space steel television tower is used as an application to examine the feasibility of the bi-model method and the effectiveness of friction dampers. The case study shows that the bi-model method can efficiently compute wind-induced response of the large space television tower with friction dampers and the installation of the friction dampers of proper parameters can significantly reduce wind-induced vibration of the tower.