In this paper, a model will be derived to describe the rain-wind-induced oscillations of an inclined cable. Water rivulets running along the cable and aerodynamics forces acting on the cable are taken into account to describe these oscillations. A boundary damper is assumed to be present near the lower endpoint of the cable. For a linearly formulated initial-boundary value problem for a tensioned beam equation describing the in-plane transversal oscillations of the cable, the effectiveness of this damper is determined by using a two-timescales perturbation method. It is shown how mode interactions play an important role in the dynamic behaviour of the cable system. Some resonant and non-resonant cases have been studied in detail.
Keywords: Rain–wind-induced vibrations of an inclined cable; Tensioned Euler–Bernoulli beam; Time-varying mass.