Effects of Enclosure Geometry on Particle Damping Performance

Abstract

The performance of particle dampers are related to the complex interdependencies between the material parameters of the particles, shape of particles, operating conditions, particle damper enclosure geometry and location within the structure. In order to investigate the effects of all these interdependencies, a number of experimental techniques combined with intricate and simplified models have been proposed. One of the more popular methods of the past few years is the application of the so called power input/ power flow method to identify the power dissipation properties of particle dampers. The coupling of this measurement method with the Discrete Element Method (DEM) has shown that DEM can be use as a good predictor of performance for particle dampers with low particle count. This allows the utilization of this modeling technique for the investigation of different designs rapidly. In this work, the effect of the damper enclosure shape on steady state performance is studied by interpolation between a number of prototype shapes in DEM simulations, whereby other parameters are held constant. It is shown that the enclosure shapes itself has a very significant effect on the performance of the dampers, indicating another useful parameter to tweak to improve performance.