Innovative Solution of Torsional Vibration Reduction by Application of Pneumatic Tuner in Shipping Piston Devices

Abstract

The industries of shipping, shipbuilding and port operations are among those in which mechanical drives with piston machines are widely used. The wide use of piston machines is the result of many years of experience and many years of development and modernization of piston machines. Usually, they operate as mechanical drives with constant operating speeds, with the exception of drives with combustion engines, which operate in a wider range of operating speeds. The limiting condition of innovation of mechanical drives with piston machines, resulting from the nature of the piston machine operation, is the torsional oscillation. The effort to decrease an energy demand of mechanical drives requires the application of non-traditional working modes, which can be considered as a deactivation of the cylinders of piston machine or an expansion of the working speed range. One of the possibilities of eliminating these limiting factors is an application of a pneumatic tuner in mechanical drives, which, in contrast to traditional solutions, has a wide range of torsional stiffness that can be smoothly changed. During experimental measurements in the resonance area, at the operating speed of 700 rpm after torsional stiffness change, a torsional vibration value of 15 Nm decreased to 5 Nm.