Manufacture of multi-mass dynamic vibration absorber using particle dampers by selective laser melting and evaluation of vibration damping performance

Abstract

Selective laser melting (SLM) has been used to fabricate lightweight and complicated structures. Lightweight structures tend to suffer from noise and vibration problems. Hence, to overcome these problems, dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) are embedded in these structures through SLM fabrication. Although SLM can control the stiffness of the DVA by structural design, it is difficult to obtain enough damping effect. To add damping to the DVA in the fabrication process, we embedded powder in the structures so that the powder can work as the damping element of the DVA. This study proposes a fabrication process for tuned particle dampers (TPD), in which the DVA with the embedded powder can be fabricated through a single SLM process. To experimentally demonstrate the vibration reduction performance of the TPD fabricated using the proposed process, we carried out impact testing of plates with multiple undamped DVA (i.e., without powder), and plates with multiple TPD. The maximum acceleration of the plates with multiple TPD and undamped DVA were 19.8 dB and 31.8 dB, lower than that of the plate without dynamic vibration absorber. These results suggest that the proposed fabrication process can effectively add damping to the DVA embedded within the lightweight structures.

Keywords

• additive manufacturing
• selective laser melting
• powder bed fusion
• particle dampers
• tuned particle damper
• dynamic damper
• dynamic vibration absorber