Design of a Magnetic Negative-stiffness-damper for Vibration Isolation

Abstract

This paper presents a novel low frequency vibration isolator. The isolator is mainly composed of a coil spring, two permanent magnets and a number of copper plates of different thickness. The negative stiffness provided by the two permanent magnets is offset by the positive stiffness of the spring, thus reducing the natural frequency of the system and broadening the isolating bandwidth. When the magnet moves, it creates eddy current damping on the copper plate. The movement of the permanent magnet and copper form a viscous damper. This makes up for the disadvantage that the isolator cannot dissipate the vibration energy. Principle of the novel vibration isolator is introduced. The optimum configuration of the vibration isolator was obtained by experiments.