Predicting the Influence of an Added Liquid in a Particle Damper using Coupled SPH and Discrete Element Method

Abstract

AbstractParticle dampers are a promising alternative compared to conventional dampers due to their very flexible ability to dissipate energy in a wide frequency range even in rough environments. Simultaneously they cover additional functions like load bearing and noise reduction. For the understanding of particle dampers it is important to take into account the relevant physical phenomena which are interacting. The particles are modeled using the Discrete Element Method (DEM). Mesh‐free methods such as the DEM pose to be appropriate in modeling large displacements of particle fillings in the damper and the dynamic contacts between adjacent particles resulting from high dynamics. In this work, a numerical experiment, where a particle damper is attached to a vertical leaf‐spring, is set up to investigate the influence of typical parameters such as particle fill‐ratios, particle size, and enclosure geometry on the damping performance of the particle damper. Moreover, the effect of an added liquid is also investigated. The Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method is used in order to model the motion of the fluid. By using a coupled SPH‐DEM approach, it is shown that complex interactions between particle‐fillings, liquid, and enclosure geometry can be sufficiently well modeled. Thereby, it is possible to predict the influence of an added liquid on the vibration attenuation properties of the particle damper. (© 2017 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)