Experimental analysis of the vibration dissipation induced by granular materials included into a 1 degree of freedom oscillator

Abstract

The use of granular material is particularly attractive to damp vibrations in hollow structures, due to grains relative motion that induce shocks and friction, interaction grains/structure and possible deformation of the grains. Therefore, granular dampers are of great interest for many application types.However, predictive modelling of the damping performance of a granular material remains particularly difficult. The objective of this experimental work is to evaluate the vibration damping performance of various granular material samples, when inserted in a vertically shaken rigid cavity. This is done by Lissajous’ representation of displacement and force time signals, which, applied to this type of system, is a methodological originality allowing a detailed analysis of the overall motion of the grain cluster. The main insights are the identification of links between certain control parameters of the granular material and the vibratory energy dissipated. From Lissajous’ representation post-processing, it is shown that dissipation increases linearly with grain mass; at given mass the dissipation increases with grain size; the use of a viscoelastic material notably increases the performance, particularly at low acceleration levels; that the roughness of surfaces in contact with the grains plays a secondary role. Finally, the set of parametric variations give a better physical understanding of the phenomena involved, which gives orientations for future modelling works.