Vibration damping aims to eliminate or reduce a structure’s vibrations. The damping of mechanical vibrations is a major issue in a large variety of industrial fields such as naval, air and space or defense.
Why do we try to reduce structures’ vibrations?
Vibration damping offers several advantages for various applications:
- Maintain the structure’s integrity: Important vibrations could damage the structure.
- Improve the users’ comfort: Reducing vibrations limits users’ discomfort, in trains for example.
- Reduce noise: Reducing noise from vibrations can be a strategic objective. In submarines, for example, keeping low vibration levels can ensure the submarine’s acoustic stealth.
- Ensure precise positioning: Some scientific measurement devices need precise positioning to work correctly. It is then essential to control their vibratory environment. This is a common issue in the spatial industry and the scientific instruments field (optical bench…).
What is PYTHEAS Technology’s solution to reduce or eliminate mechanical vibrations?
PYTHEAS Technology has developed piezoelectric vibrations absorbers, also called piezoelectric resonators, to control and limit problematic vibrations of structures. This peripheral device can be placed on a structure to absorb and dissipate vibrational energy.
Piezoelectric resonators show better performances than classic TMDs (Tuned Mass Dampers), thanks to electromechanical conversion and the use of a shunt to improve the vibrational energy dissipation. This passive solution doesn’t need any power injection. Coupling it with “smart” electronics allows to adjust the resonant frequency of the absorber in real-time. It is even possible to damp several frequencies with the same mechanical device, which represents a gain in mass.
The use of piezoelectricity offers another advantage: energy harvesting. On top of minimizing the vibration level, we can make use of it to convert a part of the vibration into electricity, to stock and reuse.
With the same principle, PYTHEAS Technology also develops piezoelectric suspensions, which offer the similar advantages: high dissipation rate and resonance frequency adaptability, -40 dB/decade filtering above the overshoot.
