The transmissibility of a vibration isolation system with ball-screw inerter based on complex mass

The wide application of the ball-screw inerter for vibration isolation has made it increasingly important to precisely determine the vibration transmissibility of the isolation system. In this reported work, the transmissibility of a vibration isolation system containing an inerter was predicted by using a complex mass M* in the calculations. The reported theoretical analysis showed that in the design of the type II inerter-spring-damper and inerter-rubber vibration isolation systems, the inertance-mass ratio must be less than twice the damping ratio to achieve improved vibration isolation performance when designing the system. To validate the findings, experimental tests were conducted on the type II inerter-spring-damper and inerter-rubber vibration isolation systems with ball-screw inerter. The experimental results showed that, based on M*, the transmissibility of these two systems was close to the experimental results, which illustrated the rationale for using M*. The results of this reported study will help facilitate the parameter design and performance analysis of a vibration isolation system with an inerter.