So-called vibration absorbers, which might more appropriately be called vibration neutralizers, are mechanical devices designed to be attached to another mechanical system, or structure, called the primary system, for the purpose of controlling, or reducing, the vibration (and consequent sound production) of machines, structural surfaces and panels. The cheapest and easiest way to construct a vibration absorber is by incorporating a viscoelastic material, functioning as both the resilient and the energy dissipating component. The viscoelastic material acts as a damped spring. This article sets out to describe how to design an optimal system of viscoelastic absorbers for a known material, through a model using four fractional parameters. A real example, of the design of a system of six viscoelastic vibration absorbers for mitigation of the response to fluid-structure instability in a hydroelectric generator system, is presented and discussed.
All rotating systems are subjected to residual unbalance forces that are proportional to speed squared. Systems that operate close to the critical speed and have low damping can generate destructive vibrations. Dynamic vibration absorbers are simple devices attached to a mechanical structure (the primary system) to reduce vibrations and noise levels and are extensively used in non-rotating systems. This study addresses the design of viscoelastic vibration absorbers for rotating systems. The primary system is modeled using modal parameters obtained in the frequency domain of the state-space representation. Using a methodology that has a more general application, the compound system (the primary system and absorbers) is represented in a modal subspace of the primary system state space. In this modal subspace, the optimal design of the dynamic viscoelastic absorbers is performed using an optimization algorithm. The objective function to be minimized is defined as the Euclidean norm of the vector composed of the maximal absolute values of the principal coordinates. The absorbers are attached to a floating bearing located away from a nodal point. Numerical and experimental results are presented and discussed.
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