Resonant vibration control of a cylindrical shell using distributed tuned mass dampers

Often structure borne noise has a deleterious effect on the performance and aesthetics of many commercial and military systems. Solutions to structural noise problems can be broadly classified into three categories: active, semi-active, and passive. With ever increasing improvements in electronics and computing, much of the recent research emphasizes active and semi-active solutions. However, passive solutions remain favorable in practice as they are often less costly to implement and less imposing on the system architecture. The tuned mass damper (TMD) is a common passive approach. Tuned mass dampers are generally used to affect a single undesirable resonance or forcing frequency. In order to affect multiple resonances multiple tuned absorbers are typically required, causing the design and implementation to be prohibitively difficult. This paper develops the concept of a modally enhanced dynamic absorber (MEDA) as a dynamic design philosophy, whereby the mass of peripheral equipment can be utilized and employed in attenuating the structural response of a larger system in some desirable way. The concept is demonstrated numerically and experimentally on a steel cylindrical shell. The importance of TMD attachment location with respect to the mode being de-tuned, robustness of TMD damping, and the effect of TMD mistuning is studied.