Optimal Positioning of Viscous Dampers in Linear Multibody Systems

Optimal positioning of dampers is an important aspect regarding the damping of vibrations of multibody systems. This study deals with the problem of finding the optimal damping constants and the optimal positions of viscous dampers for general linear mechanical systems with f degrees-of-freedom on the basis of an energy criterion. A program package MBMDAM has been developed which allows the computation of the value of the energy criterion and its constrained minimization with respect to the damping parameters of several dampers with technical restrictions.