Vibration suppression of a flywheel system using a novel nonlinear vibration absorber with an Euler buckled beam

Abstract

The micro-vibration from flywheel system, as one of the main disturbances, has restricted the effective use of high sensitive payloads in satellites. In order to suppress the low- frequency line spectrum from the flywheel, a novel nonlinear vibration absorber (NVA) using Euler buckled beam is developed. The proposed NVA is attached on the supporting structure of the flywheel assembly, aiming to attenuate the line spectrum introduced by the flywheel in operation. A discrete multi-degree-of-freedom dynamic model, which includes the NVA, the flywheel and the supporting structure by taking into account of the gyroscopic effect of the flywheel, is built. The NVA is represented by a linear positive stiffness spring and parallel Euler buckled beams. The systematic dynamic equations with and without the NVA under the micro-vibration from the flywheel, respectively, are solved by using fourth-order Runge-Kutta method in time-domain. In addition, the effects of initial imperfection, oblique angle and damping coefficient of the Euler buckled beam on the vibration suppression performance are studied. The calculating results reveal that a typical nonlinear dynamic absorber for controlling the micro-vibration from the flywheel is constructed successfully based on the provided designing parameters of the Euler buckled beam. Compared with the vibration responses of the combined system with and without the NVA, it can be concluded that the NVA has better attenuation performance. The initial imperfection and damping coefficient of the Euler buckled beam exist optimum values, and with the increase of the oblique angle, the vibration controlling characteristics of the NVA have been improved.