Design and control performance of a frictional tuned mass damper with bearing-shaft assemblies

This paper explores the feasibility of leveraging the damping generated by the friction between movable flange-mounted ball bearings and a stationary shaft. This bearing-shaft assembly is integrated with a tuned mass damper to form a frictional tuned mass damper (FTMD). The friction coefficient and the equivalent viscous damping ratio of the proposed FTMD were experimentally obtained based on different cases of glass, steel, and aluminum slide shafts. The proposed FTMD was modeled and simulated numerically to study its ability to suppress vibrations on a single degree of freedom structure. Furthermore, a parallel experimental validation of the FTMD was also executed to verify simulation results. Results from both experiments and simulations demonstrated that the proposed FTMD device was able to significantly improve the damping ratio of the primary structure from 0.35% to 5.326% during free vibration, and also to suppress around 90% of uncontrolled structural response at a tuned frequency. In particular, the frequency responses, among the tested shaft materials, suggested that the selected steel slide shaft practically provided a near-optimal damping coefficient, thus the proposed FTMD was able to considerably reduce structural resonant peak amplitudes over the tested excitation frequency domain.