Journal of Marine Science: Research & Development
Open Access

Research Article

The Control of Vibration Transmission from an Engine to its Resonant Base Structure

MWS Lau^1*, SC Fok², GL Seet³ and E Low⁴

¹School of Mechanical and Systems Engineering, Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering, University of Newcastle, Newcastle (UK), International Singapore

²Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Petroleum Institute, P.O. Box 2533, Abu Dhabi, UAE

³School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore

⁴Engineering Accreditation Board, Institution of Engineers, 70 Bukit Tinggi Road, Singapore

*Corresponding Author:

Dr. MWS Lau
School of Mechanical and Systems Engineering
Faculty of Science
Agriculture and Engineering
University of Newcastle
Newcastle (UK), International Singapore
E-mail: michael.lau@ncl.ac.uk

Received date: November 15, 2011; Accepted date: December 14, 2011; Published date: December 16, 2011

Citation: Lau MWS, Fok SC, Seet GL, Low E (2012) The Control of Vibration Transmission from an Engine to its Resonant Base Structure. J Marine Sci Res Development 2:106. doi:10.4172/2155-9910.1000106

Copyright: © 2012 Lau MWS, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Engines and motors on board marine vessels are often mounted on flexible base supports. When the levels of vibration transmitted from such machines to the base structure are intolerable, vibration reduction techniques have to be used. In instances where machines are mounted via very stiff mounts to maintain shaft alignment, the transmission paths of the vibratory force are through the mounts. In such cases, active force cancellation at the mount locations using opposing controlled forces can be used. This paper discusses the use of frequency domain techniques to reduce the vibration with the H ∞ norm as a performance measure. The model of the system, identified using frequency response method is used in the design of the H ∞ controllers for active force cancellation. Two approaches were presented. Experimental results show a reduction of between 15 ~ 65% of the measured transmitted force at different mount locations when the machine is operated at a speed of about 1320 rpm. This frequency matches that of the machine-base system principal mode. Where the system response is not significant, reduction in transmitted force level is minimal. This limitation is the result of the control goal used in the design.

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