Frictional dissipation in axially loaded simple straight strands

In this paper, an analytical investigation is made of the frictional damping properties of axially loaded metallic cables made from one layer of wires helically wrapped around a central wire. Our efforts are focused on the quantity of energy dissipated through friction due to the motions between wires when a cable is loaded. Although the local interwire pivoting drives the response of the cables studied, a first linear model is built where pivoting is allowed, but friction is not taken into account. Then, a law of friction is established and linearized to extend the linear model into a tractable piecewise linear hysteretic one. Through a variety of examples, it appears that the energy dissipated in friction over a load cycle is very small compared to other sources of dissipation, because axially loaded simple straight strands do not experience fretting-induced failures, except close to terminations. It is also shown that modifying the design of such cables is not expected to significantly improve their damping properties.