Vibration isolation by a variable stiffness and damping system

Abstract

Most passive vibration isolation systems are composed of springs and dampers. Although it is possible to improve the isolation performance by active vibration control, the complexity, power requirements and cost of such a system have restricted its use. A vibration isolation system with variable damping is practical and has good performance in the high frequency region, but it was found not to improve the responses in the low frequency region. On the base of a damping on-off control method, a stiffness on-off control method and a combination of damping and stiffness on-off control method were proposed. Comparison of the responses among the proposed methods and the conventional methods showed that the damping and stiffness on-off control method had the best isolation properties in the whole frequency region. A new system with controllable dampers of two Voigt elements in series was used to achieve the proposed idea.