Z-DAMPER: A NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR VIBRATION CONTROL AT EXTREME TEMPERATURES
Madrid-18/07/2016 – MAG SOAR in collaboration with UAH develops a completely innovative system to face vibration problems by mechanical impedance matching.
Vibration control of buildings, airplanes, cars and other kinds of systems and structures is an extremely important issue in constant evolution. Insufficient control of vibration propagation can cause the critical failure and ultimately, the total breakage of a structure. Devastated buildings after earthquakes are extreme examples of the consequences of out of control vibrations.
There are different forms to reduce, mitigate or suppress vibrations. The simplest way is to increase the elasticity of the ground connections between a moving machine and a stable surface. Multiple solutions have been developed with this purpose that go from elastic couplings to floating benches. All of them can provide a quite a good vibration isolation with an appropriate design. However, these are limited to normal temperature and relatively high frequencies. Moreover, these solutions usually involve a significative increment of weight.
MAG SOAR engineers have just designed a new vibration control technology able to handle extreme temperature conditions at low and high frequencies thanks to mechanical impedance coupling. Z-DAMPER is a zero-backlash magneto-mechanism that has been optimized for matching mechanical impedances in order to control vibration propagation in a structure. This is the first damping technology to reach temperatures as high as 250 ˚C and as low as -200 ˚C and able to cope with high dynamic forces. Besides, there is not contact between the movable members so it barely needs maintenance. All of this makes Z-Damper the perfect candidate for extreme temperature environments where lubrication and wear related problems can have catastrophic consequences.
Z-DAMPER can also be applied to enhance the efficiency of other damping systems, like tuned vibration absorbers, eddy-current dampers and particularly, those with a poor performance at low frequency vibrations. The working principle detailed in the recently published paper, “Z-Damper: a new paradigm for attenuation of vibrations”
