A New Design of Vibration Absorber for Periodic Excitation

Abstract

The authors designed a novel type of dynamic vibration absorber, called periodic vibration absorber (PVA), for mechanical systems subjected to periodic excitation. Since the periodic rather than single harmonic excitation is themost occurring case in mechanical systems, the design of PVA is hence of engineering significance. The PVA designed in this paper is composed of a dual-beam interconnected with a discrete spring in between. By appropriately choosing the design parameters, the PVA can be of resonance frequencies in integer multiples of the base frequency such that the PVA can absorb significant amount of higher harmonics in addition to the base harmonic. The designed PVA was first experimentally verified for its resonance frequencies. The PVA implemented onto a mechanical system was then tested for its absorption ability. From both tests, satisfying agreement between experiments and numerical calculations has been obtained. The sensitivities of the design variables, such as the discrete spring’s stiffness and location, were discussed as well. The parameters’ sensitivities provided us with the PVA’s adjustable room for excitation frequency’s mismatch. Numerical results showed that within 3% of frequency mismatch, the PVA still performed better than a single DVA via adjusting the spring’s constant and location. All the results proved that the novel type of PVA could be a very effective device for vibration reduction of mechanical systems subjected to periodic excitation.