Reducing the vibration excitability of a metal plate by applying variable vibrodamping inserts

Abstract

Thin-walled steel structures of process equipment and vehicles composed of plates are constantly agitated and become powerful sources and conductors of acoustic vibration. To reduce acoustic vibration, special vibrodamping coatings are usually applied to the plate surface by gluing or spraying. However for many engineering applications, concerned with reduction of acoustic vibration, the use of vibrodamping coatings is limited or impossible for a number of reasons, namely, the variability in geometric surface configuration of thin-walled steel structures, stringent restrictions of structure weight (e.g. in hovercrafts) and others. An alternative solution is the use of piece vibrodamping rubber inserts, applied to the plate through perforation. The inserts can be made either solid or with inner channel for free shift of extra weight in the form of a ball. The paper summarizes the results of experimental studies on reducing the loss factor for vibration excitability of plates with inserts.