On Vibration Suppression and Energy Dissipation Using Tuned Mass Particle Damper

Particle damping has the promising potential for attenuating unwanted vibrations in harsh environments especially under high temperatures where conventional damping materials would not be functional. Nevertheless, a limitation of simple particle damper (PD) configuration is that the damping effect is insignificant if the local displacement/acceleration is low. In this research, we investigate the performance of a tuned mass particle damper (TMPD) in which the particle damping mechanism is integrated into a tuned mass damper (TMD) configuration. The essential idea is to combine the respective advantages of these two damping concepts and in particular to utilize the tuned mass damper configuration as a motion magnifier to amplify the energy dissipation capability of particle damper when the local displacement/acceleration of the host structure is low. We formulate a first-principle-based dynamic model of the integrated system and analyze the particle motion by using the discrete element method (DEM). We perform systematic parametric studies to elucidate the damping effect and energy dissipation mechanism of a TMPD. We demonstrate that a TMPD can provide significant vibration suppression capability, essentially outperforming conventional particle damper.