Study of Passive Vibration Absorbers Attached on Beam Structure

Abstract

Structural vibration is undesirable, wasting energy and possibly leading to excessive deflections and structure and machine’s failure. In order to reduce structural vibration, one of the common way is considering vibration absorber system attach to the structure. In this study, a vibration absorber is developed in a small scale size. The host structure selected for the study is a fixed-fixed ends beam. The effectiveness of vibration absorbers attached to a beam is investigated through experimental study. In prior to experiment, a finite element analysis of Solidworks® and analytical equations of Matlab® are produced in order to determine the structural dynamic response of the beam, such as the natural frequency and mode shapes. The preliminary results of finite element analysis demonstrate that the first five natural frequency of fixed-fixed end beam are 17Hz, 46Hz, 90Hz, 149Hz and 224Hz, and these results are in agreement with the beam’s analytical equations. However, there are slight discrepancies in experiment result due to noise and error occurred during the setup. In the later stage, the experimental works of beam are performed with attached vibration absorber. Result shows that the attachment of vibration absorber produces better outcome, which is about 45% vibration reduction. It is expected that by adding more vibration absorber to the structure, the vibration attenuation can significant.