Simulation and Characterization of Particle Damping in Transient Vibrations

Particle damping is a technique of providing damping with granular particles embedded within small holes in a vibrating structure. The particles absorb kinetic energy through particle-to-wall and particle-to-particle frictional collisions. While the concept of particle damping seems to be simple and it has been used successfully in many fields for vibration reduction, it is difficult to predict the damping characteristics due to complex collisions in the dense particle flow. In this paper, we utilize the 3D discrete element method (DEM) for computer simulation and characterization of particle damping. With the DEM modeling tool validated with experimental results, it is shown that the particle damping can achieve a very high value of specific damping capacity. Furthermore, simulations provide information of particle motions within the container hole during three different regions and help explain their associated damping characteristics. The particle damping is a combination of the impact and the friction damping. The damping is found to be highly nonlinear as the rate of energy dissipation depends on amplitude. Particularly, the damping effect results in a linear decay in amplitude over a finite period of time. These characteristics are examined with respect to a simple single-mass impact damper and a dry-friction damper. It is concluded that the particle damping is a mix of these two damping mechanisms. It is further shown that the relative significance of these damping mechanisms depends on a particular arrangement of the damper. This study represents an effort towards a deeper understanding of particle damping to provide a comprehensive methodology for its analysis and design.