Vibration reduction using dynamic absorbers
Frits Petit
Supervisor(s): Mia Loccufier, Dirk Aeyels
Abstract— This article explains the use of dynamic absorbers to attenu-
ate vibrations in mechanical constructions such as buildings, bridges, drive
trains, etc. Together with a reduction of the vibration amplitude, the ab-
sorber also changes the eigenfrequencies of the construction. An important
application is the avoidance of resonance. The focus of the research will be
achieving a frequency band free of eigenfrequencies by using one or more
dynamic absorbers.
Keywords—Vibrations, dynamic absorbers, resonance
I. I NTRODUCTION
R EDUCING vibrations is an important objective encoun-
tered in many different areas of engineering. Vibrations
are often a threat to the lifespan of constructions. Take for ex-
ample an earthquake damaging a building, wind destroying a
bridge, or a drive train, where torsional vibrations caused by
reciprocating and rotating machinery damage elastic couplings,
gearboxes or even the shaft itself [1]. The accuracy of a mea-
surement is highly affected by the amount of vibrations. The
quality of a production process decreases if it is exposed to vi-
brations. Due to the larger dimensions of structures, the demand
of increasing machines’ operating speeds and higher accuracy
and quality of products, reducing vibrations becomes more and
more an important issue.
II. WAYS OF REDUCING VIBRATION
There exist numerous methods to reduce unacceptable lev-
els of vibration amplitudes. Besides making an engine run
smoother or reducing the unbalance in rotating machinery, the
excitation amplitude of the vibration source can usually not be
altered. Therefore, we act upon the dynamic properties of the
structure itself. This should be done in the design stage. How-
ever, a construction is generally an assembly of components
delivered by different companies. Precise information of each
component is hard to get. Obtaining an accurate prediction of
the dynamic properties of the complete structure in the design
stage is difficult. Therefore methods are developed to change
the dynamic properties after the structure has been built.
There are three different approaches. The first one is active con-
trol [2]. A sensor measures the amount of vibration and via a
control loop an actuator is driven that counters the vibration.
This explains the word active: an extra power source is submit-
ted to the system. Although this system has a large flexibility,
adding sensors and actuators is rather expensive. Moreover ro-
bustness is a delicate issue. The two other approaches modify
the structural dynamics of the construction. First we have the
structural modification [3]. Here mass, stiffness and damping
properties of the structure are modified to minimize the vibra-
tion amplitude. In this article the third approach is discussed:
F. Petit is with the Systems Research Group, Department of Electrical Energy,
Systems and Automation, Ghent University (UGent), Gent, Belgium. E-mail:
Frits.Petit@UGent.be .
the dynamic absorber. A robust solution, easy to attach to the
structure and not expensive.
In Section III the concept and the focus of the research are pre-
sented. Section IV explains the author’s approach. Section V
gives some conclusions.
III. BASIC CONCEPT
The dynamic absorber is applied extensively in engineering
structures like buildings, bridges and towers, in transportation
like cars, ships and helicopters.
Basically the absorber consists of an inertia (mh ) connected to
the structure with springs (kh ) and possibly dampers (ch )(Fig.
1): The founders of this technique are Frahm [4] and Den Har-
Structure
x0 exp(jωa t)
kh ch
xr exp(jωa t)
mh
Fig. 1. Basic dynamic absorber.
tog [5]. Although dynamic absorbers are capable to reduce vi-
brations at any excitation frequency, we only discuss resonance
conditions. This happens when the excitation frequency (ωa )
equals one of the eigenfrequencies (ωi )of the structure. As a
result high vibration amplitudes will almost certain damage the
structure. To avoid this resonance phenomenon the eigenfre-
quency of the absorber is tuned to the excitation frequency ωa
:

kh
= ωa = ωi (1)
mh
The dynamic absorber counteracts the vibration at the tuned fre-
quency. The effect is shown in figure 2. It seems an absorber
with damping is capable of reducing the vibration amplitude
over a wide frequency range. This is not the case for the dy-
namic absorber without damping. Although the vibration is
completely suppressed at ωa , a slight change of the excitation
frequency could introduce a new resonant condition. The ques-
tion arises whether it is possible to reduce vibrations over a wide
frequency range using only simple dynamic absorbers without
damping. This will be the focus of this research. We can replace
the simple dynamic absorber without damping by:
• a combination of simple dynamic absorbers [6]
• one multidimensional absorber
• absorbers with non-linear elements
• absorbers with adaptive elements
 Bode Diagram Bode Diagram
150 150

eigenfrequencies or resonances
original system 100
100

50
50

Magnitude (dB)

Magnitude (dB)
0

−50

−50 red: optimal damping

−100

−100
blue: no damping
−150

anti-resonances
−150 −200
−1 0 1 2 4 6 8 10 12
10 10 10
Frequency (rad/sec) Frequency (rad/sec)

Fig. 2. Vibration amplitude as a function of the excitation frequency ω. One Fig. 4. Vibration amplitude as a function of the excitation frequency ω.
degree of freedom system + dynamic absorber tuned for ωa .
Bode Diagram
150

IV. A NALYZING THE PROBLEM 100 ωa

Investigation of all the possible approaches given above starts 50

with a perfect understanding of the effect of attaching one sim-

ple dynamic absorber without damping to a structure. How do

Magnitude (dB)
0

the dynamic properties of a structure change?

−50
To understand this and later on the more difficult approaches,
we need a theoretical model of the structure. Given the inertia −100

and stiffness properties a reduced model (without damping) is

obtained. Reduced in the sense that the real structure has more −150

degrees of freedom than the model. −200

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
The model equation can be found via Newton’s second law: Frequency (rad/sec)

M q̈ + Kq = 0 (2) Fig. 5. Vibration amplitude as a function of the excitation frequency ω.

with M = M
∈ Rmxm the mass matrix, K = K
∈ Rmxm

the stiffness matrix and q ∈ Rm the coordinate vector. From
this model the eigenfrequencies (modes) and mode shapes can
be calculated. Figure 3 gives an example of a reduced model.
This can be a model for the drive train of a ship. A model is
an approximation of a real structure. This results in an approx-
imation of the resonance frequencies. Therefore it is important
to create a frequency band free of resonances such that the ab-
sorber design is robust towards modal mismatch. Figure 4 gives
the vibration amplitude of one of the masses in the frequency
domain when the structure is excited with a harmonic load. The
eigenfrequencies appear a resonances, i.e., the maximum values
of the amplitude. The effect of attaching one dynamic absorber
shown that the eigenfrequencies cannot shift further than the
neighboring anti-resonances (Fig 4). These anti-resonances are
different for each location, such that an optimal placement for
the absorber can be derived.
V. F URTHER RESEARCH
Knowing the optimal placement for the absorber is an impor-
tant step. Later on the use of multiple dynamic absorbers and
the more complex multi-dimensional absorber will be investi-
gated. Here the challenge will be to find the optimal structure
of the attached system that enables a frequency range free of
eigenfrequencies.

k1 k2 k3 k4 R EFERENCES
m1 m2 m3 m4 m5
[1] M. L. Adams, Rotating Machinery Vibration, Marcel Dekker Inc., New
York (2001).
k1 k2 k3 k4
m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 [2] J.E. Mottershead, Y.M. Ram Inverse eigenvalue problems in vibration ab-
kh
sorption: Passive modification and active control, Elsevier Ltd.(2005)
mh Dynamic
Absorber [3] J. He Structural modification, The Royal Society(2001)359,187-204
[4] H. Frahm Device for Damping Vibrations of Bodies, U.S. Patent 989,958
(1911).
Fig. 3. Reduced model with and without absorber
[5] J.P. Den Hartog Mechanical Vibrations, McGraw-Hill, New York (1956).
[6] M. Loccufier and E. Noldus Vibration Isolation of Structures Using At-
can be seen in figure 3 and 5. The absorber adds one degree of tached Absorbers, Proceedings of ISMA2004 Leuven, p. 3603-3610 (2004).
freedom and thus one eigenfrequency to the original model.
We see a certain shift in the eigenfrequencies in figure 5. For a
given kh and mh this shift depends only on the location of the
absorber on the structure. Combining simulation results with
a mathematical approach yielded an interesting theorem. It is