Damping prediction of particle dampers for structures under forced vibration using effective fields

Particle damping is a promising damping technique for a variety of technical applications. However, their non-linear behavior and multitude of influence parameters, hinder currently its wide practical use. So far, most researchers focus either on determining the energy dissipation inside the damper or on the overall damping behavior when coupled to a structure. Indeed, currently almost no knowledge exchange between both approaches occurs. Here, a bridge is build to combine both techniques for systems under forced vibrations by coupling the energy dissipation field and effective particle mass field of a particle damper with a reduced model of a vibrating structure. Thus, the overall damping of the structure is estimated very quickly. This combination of both techniques is essential for an overall efficient dimensioning process and also provides a deeper understanding of the dynamical processes. The accuracy of the proposed coupling method is demonstrated via a simple application example. Hereby, the energy dissipation and effective mass of the particle damper are analyzed for a large excitation range first using a shaker setup. The particle damper exhibits multiple areas of different efficiency. The underlying structure is modeled using FEM and modal reduction techniques. By coupling both parts it is shown that multiple eigenmodes of the structure are highly damped using the particle damper. The damping prediction using the developed coupling procedure is validated via experiments of the overall structure with particle damper.