Technical Design and Virtual Testing of a Dynamic Vibration Absorber for the Vibration Control of a Flexible Structure

This research work aims to design and develop a dynamic vibration absorber that effectively reduces the vibrations of a flexible structure subjected to external loads. The analysis presented in this paper initially focuses on identifying the resonance frequencies of a typical structural system, which serves as the case study, since these frequencies are critical to dampening due to their potential to cause excessively large vibration amplitudes. Following this, the optimal parameters of the vibration absorber, including the mass, stiffness, and damping characteristics of the proposed design, were determined. Additionally, this paper proposes and examines the use of viscous-type damping, which is achieved through piston–cylinder systems connected to the structural components of the analyzed frame structure. Thus, the main contributions of this work include the analytical dimensioning, the technical design, and the virtual prototyping of a dynamic absorber constructed using a guyed mast structure capable of significantly reducing mechanical vibrations. This design solution ultimately enhances the strength and durability of the frame structure represented in the case study under external excitation, particularly in the worst-case scenario of seismic action. Furthermore, a key aspect of this study is implementing a new numerical procedure for identifying the system equivalent stiffness coefficient based on its mass and modal parameters, which is particularly useful in engineering applications. The numerical experiments conducted in this work support the effectiveness of the proposed design solution, devised specifically for the dynamic vibration absorber developed in this paper.