REDUCTION OF HIGH FREQUENCY EXCITATIONS IN A CAM PROFILE BY USING MODIFIED SMOOTHING SPLINE CURVES

High frequency excitation terms in a cam profile can excite vibration of a cam follower system. In this paper, modified smoothing spline curves are used to reduce the high frequency terms. The essential difference between the proposed method and other existing approaches is its ability to make the principal cam motions smooth while still exactly satisfying boundary conditions of follower displacement, velocity and acceleration. The boundary values usually depend on the ramp properties of a cam. Our method, thus, allows designers to smooth the existing cam motion without any damages on its ramp areas. Because the ramp height, velocity and acceleration are maintained exactly, more radical smoothing is possible. An example shows that the proposed method can be a powerful tool of cam profile smoothing, which removes high frequency components in the cam profile excitations without any changes in ramp properties.