Design of robust particle dampers using inner structures and coated container walls

Abstract

Classical particle dampers suffer from their non-robust damping behavior, i.e. they can only be efficiently applied to a specific frequency range and amplitude range. The reason for that is that particle motion, also called motion mode, and damper efficiency show a strong correlation. By changing particle or container properties the motion modes are shifted to other excitation conditions but their efficient range is not much affected. To increase the damping performance and robustness of particle dampers, two approaches are presented here by introducing new motion modes. Therefore, the particle dampers are analyzed experimentally using a shaker setup and numerically using the discrete element method. The first design approach uses inner structures inside the particle damper, manufactured by a 3D printer. The inner structures consist of different numbers of beams, placed perpendicular to the container moving direction. They lead to a much more robust damper as the transition between the motion modes gets smoother. For the second approach, the container walls are equipped with different soft polymers. In this way a new motion mode at low excitation intensities is observed, leading to a high efficiency possibly on a large excitation intensity range. For an easy calculation of the necessary wall’s Young’s modulus an analytical formula based on Hertz impact theory is derived.