Research on the effects of raft on vibration isolation

Abstract

The floating raft vibration isolation system includes upper and lower isolators and middle raft. As one of the most important parts that affect the performance of vibration isolation, the raft is usually assumed to be an undamped or viscous damping structure in the analysis, which is different from the actual situation. To study the effects of raft with hysteresis damping characteristics, a three-freedom complex stiffness mechanical model was built, and an approach for calculating the raft's force transmission rate was derived from impedance methods. Based on the mechanical model and a large-sized floating raft, we analysed the effects of raft mass, stiffness and damping on vibration isolation through numerical calculation. Results show that increasing raft mass improved vibration isolation over most frequency ranges; increase in raft stiffness contributed to improved isolation performance over frequency ranges near its low-order natural frequencies, while reduced the performance over higher frequency ranges; and greater raft damping led to enhanced vibration isolation at its natural frequencies and higher frequency ranges.