A tunable torsional vibration absorber: The centrifugal delayed resonator

A novel active vibration absorption device, the Centrifugal Delayed Resonator (CDR), is presented as an efficient way of eliminating undesired torsional oscillations in rotating mechanical structures. A damped centrifugal pendulum device is forced to mimic an ideal real-time tunable absorber utilizing a control torque in the form of proportional angular position feedback with variable gain and time delay. Strengths of the technique consist of total vibration suppression in the primary structure against harmonic torque excitation, full effectiveness of the absorber against time-varying frequency, very wide range of operating frequencies, complete decoupling of the feedback control from the structural and dynamic properties of the primary structure, extremely simple implementation of the control scheme, and fault-tolerant performance in the case of control failure. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.