Novel active vibration absorber with magnetorheological fluid

Disturbing vibrations diminish the performance of technical high precision devices significantly. In search of a suitable solution for reducing these vibrations, a novel concept of active vibration reduction was developed which exploits the special properties of magnetorheological fluids. In order to evaluate the concept of such an active vibration absorber (AVA) a demonstrator was designed and manufactured. This demonstrator generates a force which counteracts the motion of the vibrating body. Since the counterforce is generated by a centrifugal exciter, the AVA provides the capability to compensate vibrations even in two dimensions. To control the strength of the force transmitted to the vibrating body, the exciter is based on a tunable MR coupling. The AVA was integrated in an appropriate testing device to investigate its performance. The recorded results show a significant reduction of the vibration amplitudes by an order of magnitude.