A Circular Eccentric Vibration Absorber With Circumferentially Graded Acoustic Black Hole Features

A previously proposed planar axisymmetric dynamic vibration absorber (DVA), with embedded acoustic black hole (ABH) features, has been shown to suffer from the very selective coupling with the host structure, thus compromising its vibration reduction performance. To tackle the problem, an eccentric ABH-based circular DVA whose thickness profile is tailored according to a circumferential gradient variation is proposed. This new configuration preserves the ABH profile in the radial direction and breaks the axisymmetric of the original DVA design at the same time. While the former permits the ABH features to fully play out in a continuous manner, the later entails a more effective coupling with the host structure. These salient properties have been demonstrated and confirmed both numerically and experimentally by examining a benchmark plate structure. For analyses, a coupling model embracing the host structure and the add-on DVAs is established which allows the calculation of the coupling coefficient, a vital quantity to guide the DVA design. Studies demonstrate the advantages of the proposed DVA over existing designs for the same given mass. The enriched structural coupling and the enhanced modal damping, arising from the eccentric and circumferentially graded ABH design, are shown to be the origin of such improvement. All in all, the physical process underpinning the dynamic absorber principle and waveguide absorber from the host structures is simultaneously consolidated, thus leading to superior broadband structural vibration suppression. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4053475]