Tuneable vibration absorber using acceleration and displacement feedback

This study is concerned with the analysis and design of a tuneable vibration absorber, which is composed by a flexible beam with a clamping block in the middle and two masses symmetrically mounted at the two ends. The free length of the beam is used to accommodate piezoelectric strain actuators. The two masses at the ends are equipped with inertial accelerometers. This arrangement is used to generate two independent acceleration feedback control loops that produce virtual mass effects, which shift the absorbing frequency of the device. Another arrangement is also studied where the two accelerometer outputs are time-integrated twice in order to implement displacement feedback loops that change the beam stiffness to shift the characteristic frequency of the device. The two feedback approaches are first analysed theoretically, using a mobility-impedance model, and then experimentally on a prototype absorber unit. The stability of the feedback loops is studied using the Nyquist criterion in order to estimate the limits on the tuneable range of frequencies which are set by the maximum stable feedback gains. The study indicates that the stability margins for the acceleration feedback loops substantially depend on the application of an appropriate low-pass filter. On the contrary, the implementation of displacement feedback gives better stability margins.