ON THE COUNTERACTION OF PERIODIC TORQUES FOR ROTATING SYSTEMS USING CENTRIFUGALLY DRIVEN VIBRATION ABSORBERS

Abstract

A class of mechanical systems is considered which rotate about a fixed axis and are subjected to applied, angle-periodic torques. Of interest here is the counteraction of these torques by means of centrifugally driven masses which move along prescribed paths relative to the rotating system. The linear theory for these centrifugal pendulum vibration absorbershas been thoroughly understood for many years, and some work on thenon-linear aspects of the dynamics has been carried out. These studies have focused on the effects that certain paths have for prescribed torques, but have not considered the construction of paths directly from the torques. Herein a classification of the torques is provided, which can be exactly counteracted by a single point absorber or by a pair of identical point absorbers moving out-of-phase with respect to each other. In additon, a technique is given for generating the absorber path(s) for these torques and the method is demonstrated with five examples. Also, design strategy is described by which one can use sets of absorbers to cancel a general periodic torque. These results provide a basis for the design of absorber path configurations and will be relevant to future work in which optimal paths are considered for more general torques.