Effects and Prospects of the Vibration Isolation Methods for an Atomic Interference Gravimeter

An atomic interference gravimeter (AIG) is of great value in underwater aided navigation, but one of the constraints on its accuracy is vibration noise. For this reason, technology must be developed for its vibration isolation. Up to now, three methods have mainly been employed to suppress the vibration noise of an AIG, including passive vibration isolation, active vibration isolation and vibration compensation. This paper presents a study on how vibration noise affects the measurement of an AIG, a review of the research findings regarding the reduction of its vibration, and the prospective development of vibration isolation technology for an AIG. Along with the development of small and movable AIGs, vibration isolation technology will be better adapted to the challenging environment and be strongly resistant to disturbance in the future.

An innovative X-shaped vibration isolation mount with tunable quasi-zero-stiffness property

Passive vibration isolation is always preferable in many engineering practices. To this aim, an innovative, compact, and passive vibration isolation mount is studied in this paper. The novel mount is adjustable to different payloads due to a special oblique and tunable stiffness mechanism, and of high vibration isolation performance with a wider quasi-zero-stiffness range due to the deliberate employment of negative stiffness of the X-shaped structure. The X-shaped structure has been well studied recently due to its excellent nonlinear stiffness and damping properties. In this study, by using of the negative stiffness property within the X-shaped structure, the X-shaped mount (X-mount) can have an obviously larger vibration displacement range which maintains the quasi-zero-stiffness property. A special oblique spring is thus introduced such that the overall equivalent stiffness can be much easily adjusted. Systematic parametric study is conducted to reveal the critical design parameters and their relationship with vibration isolation performance. A prototype and experimental validations are implemented to validate the theoretical results. It is believed that the X-mount would provide an innovative technical upgrade to many existing vibration isolation mounts in various engineering practices and it could also be the first prototyped mount which can offer adjustable quasi-zero stiffness conveniently.

Innovative elastomeric shear leg mount concepts for quasi-zero stiffness isolation

Passive vibration isolation may be a cost-effective solution to isolate a supported system containing a source and/or receiver from the supporting structure. The standard linear theory suggests a low-stiffness joint to create a mobility mismatch in the transmission path, but this solution may lead to large amplitude motions in the supported system. To achieve both motion control and isolation with the same mount and without compromising either objective, an innovative, nonlinear mount concept is proposed. Taking advantage of geometric nonlinearity for large displacements, a quasi-zero stiffness is generated by exploiting the interaction between the nonlinear mechanisms that govern the motion of a number of inclined shear legs. For example, a three-regime stiffness profile is created, including a medium-stiffness preload regime, a quasi-zero stiffness isolation regime, and a high-stiffness motion control regime. This concept offers significant benefits compared with a more conventional compromise approach in that low-amplitude vibrations are exceptionally isolated while large amplitude transient motions are controlled. Illustrative computational examples will be presented to support the underlying linear and nonlinear design principles. Limiting cases will be discussed as well.

Tilt Active Vibration Isolation Using Vertical Pendulum and Piezoelectric Transducer with Parallel Controller

Tilt vibrations inevitably have negative effects on some precise engineering even after applying horizontal and vertical vibration isolations. It is difficult to adopt a traditional passive vibration isolation (PVI) scheme to realize tilt vibration isolation. In this paper, we present and develop a tilt active vibration isolation (AVI) device using a vertical pendulum (VP) tiltmeter and a piezoelectric transducer (PZT). The potential resolution of the VP is dependent on the mechanical thermal noise in the frequency bandwidth of about 0.0265 nrad, which need not be considered because it is far below the ground tilt of the laboratory. The tilt sensitivity of the device in an open-loop mode, investigated experimentally using a voltage controller, is found to be (1.63±0.11)×105 V/rad. To compensate for the hysteresis nonlinearity of the PZT, we experimentally established the multi-loop mathematical model of hysteresis, and designed a parallel controller consisting of both a hysteresis inverse model predictor and a digital proportional–integral–differential (PID) adjuster. Finally, the response of the device working in close-loop mode to the tilt vibration was tested experimentally, and the tilt AVI device showed a good vibration isolation performance, which can remarkably reduce the tilt vibration, for example, from 6.0131 μrad to below 0.0103 μrad.

Vibration Isolation With Passive Linkage Mechanisms

This study is to present a novel way to achieve superior passive vibration isolation by employing a specially-designed and compact linkage mechanism. The proposed anti-vibration system has beneficial nonlinear inertia, inspired by swinging motion of human arms, and is constructed with an adjustable nonlinear stiffness system inspired by animal or human leg skeleton. It is shown with comprehensive theoretical analysis and consequently validated by a series of well-designed experiments that the nonlinear stiffness, nonlinear damping and nonlinear inertia of the proposed system are very helpful for significantly reducing natural frequency and enhancing damping effect in a beneficial nonlinear way. This results in excellent vibration isolation performance with lower resonant frequency and resonant peak of faster decay rate. This study provides an innovative solution to a cost-efficient vibration control demanded in various engineering systems.

Design Methodology of a Passive Vibration Isolation System for an Optical System With Sensitive Line-of-Sight

The performance of an optical system with sensitive line-of-sight (LOS) is influenced by rotational vibration. In view of this, a design methodology is proposed for a passive vibration isolation system in an optical system with sensitive LOS. Rotational vibration is attributed to two sources: transmitted from the mounting base and generated by modal coupling. Therefore, the elimination of the rotational vibration caused by coupling becomes an important part of the design of the isolation system. Additionally, the decoupling conditions of the system can be obtained. When the system is totally decoupled, the vibration on each degree of freedom (DOF) can be analyzed independently. Therefore, the stiffness and damping coefficient on each DOF could be obtained by limiting the vibration transmissibility, in accordance to actual requirements. The design of a vibration isolation system must be restricted by the size and shape of the payload and the installation space, and the layout constrains are thus also discussed.