Vibration control of a flywheel by a friction ring dynamic vibration absorber

Friction rings viscoelastically mounted on the arms of a flywheel to reduce vibration by functioning as friction dynamic vibration absorbers (DVAs) are proposed in this study. A design method is also proposed for the friction ring DVA under different friction models, namely Coulomb friction, tanh friction, and Stribeck friction. An equivalent nonlinear 11-degree-of-freedom (DOF) dynamic model of the flywheel with the friction ring DVA system is established to investigate the vibration reduction performance of the DVA system. A genetic algorithm is employed to determine the optimal parameters for the friction ring DVA. The harmonic balance method and the alternate frequency-/time-domain (AFT) method are used to solve the governing equations of the system and perform forced response analysis and nonlinear modal analysis. In addition, the effects of different parameters on the vibration reduction performance of the friction ring DVA are analysed. The results show that all three types of friction ring DVAs exhibit sufficiently good performance in mitigating the vibration of the flywheel. The friction ring DVAs under Coulomb friction, tanh friction, and Stribeck friction have a broad effective frequency range for vibration reduction.