Damping of flexibles structures – An overview of DTU activities

At LMSSC, Paris, July 1st 2021, 1.30 p.m.

Jan Høgsberg
Associate Professor, Solid Mechanics, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

The design and tuning of external damping devices has been an active research area for decades at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark (in short DTU Mechanical Engineering).

The mainly theoretical solutions and derivation of closed form design formulas range from the now classic expression for tuning of a local viscous damper on a taut cable to the more recent explicit inclusion of residual mode correction for inerter-based vibration absorbers inside a flexible structure. Our various research efforts in general aim at incorporating the local effects by the damper or absorber, to account as accurately as possible for the intrinsic change in vibration form induced by the device itself.

However, the present talk will merely give an overview of the different engineering problems and the associated solution strategies, thus not diving too far into the finer details. If time allows, the theoretical examples will instead briefly consider the viscous damper on a flexible structure, shunted piezoelectric transducers, inerter-based vibration absorbers and a smart pendulum damper for offshore wind turbines.

Details concerning the design of a hybrid mechanical-piezoelectric vibration absorber will instead be the main topic of a subsequent seminar. Finally, the presentation will highlight other research areas at DTU Mechanical Engineering, allowing us to identify common academic interests that we can discuss in the weeks to follow.