A novel shock isolator for heavy structure installation

Abstract

During the heavy structure installation process, any external disturbance may result in a huge impact on the substructure due to the extremely large mass involved, which may damage the whole structure permanently. Therefore, a reliable shock isolator for the installation interface is very important in such applications. In this study, a novel shock isolator based on a hydraulic damper is presented. It has been designed with an optimized throttling orifice to dissipate the energy efficiently and with air bags to store energy. Considering the maximal relative travel range of the isolator within a specified physical limit, the design is formulated as an optimization problem to minimize the peak acceleration during the impact and finalized as a constant force isolator. A mathematical model of the isolator is established and a prediction of its performance is obtained through some simulations. Experiments are performed to evaluate the theoretical model and it is found that the experimental data agree with the theoretical prediction very well, and thus validates the design. The influence of initial oil pressure and the material of elastic impact head are also investigated. The results show that higher initial oil pressure increases the peak acceleration, while the material of the elastic impact head has no significant effect on that.