Dynamics of a suspended cable under moving masses

In this paper, nonlinear in-plane vibrations of a suspended cable carrying moving masses are investigated. A consistent model of the cable/mass system including both geometrical nonlinearities and convective acceleration effects is adopted. Following the well-known “mode acceleration” method, an improved series representation of the response is derived by adding the so-called “quasistatic” solution to the conventional series expansion in terms of eigenfunctions of the associated linear problem. Numerical results presented in the paper demonstrate the convergence of the improved series, which enables to capture with very few terms the abrupt changes of cable profile at the contact points between the masses and the cable.