Dynamic Characteristics of a Variable Damping Isolator with Translating Cam

Abstract

A variable damping isolator based on a translating cam designed especially is proposed in this paper. The nonlinear variable damping isolator is mainly comprised of translating cam with a pair of rollers arranged symmetrically and horizontally and two linear dampers. The damping force of this isolator increases with the increase of its vertical displacement. The dynamic equation is established when the variable damping isolator is applied to the active isolation system under simple harmonic excitation. And the dynamic response of the equation is obtained by Harmonic Balance Method. After that, the numerical simulations are conducted to discuss the effects of the parameters of the isolation system on force transmissibility. The results show that the effects on attenuating the resonance and the force transmissibility in the region of high-frequency ratio are superior to that of the corresponding linear damping vibration isolator when appropriate design parameters (cam profile and damping coefficient of the horizontal linear damper) of the variable damping isolator are selected.