Performance of Particle Dampers Under Random Excitation

An experimental and analytical study is made of the performance of particle dampers under wide-band random excitation. A small model, provided with a nonlinear auxiliary mass damper, was used to investigate the major system parameters that influence the performance of particle dampers: total auxiliary mass ratio, particle size, container dimension, and the intensity and direction of the excitation. It is shown that properly designed particle dampers, even with a relatively small mass ratio, can considerably reduce the response of lightly damped structures. An approximate analytical solution, which is based on the concept of an equivalent single unit-impact damper, is presented. It is shown that the approximate solution can provide an adequate estimate of the root-mean-square response of the randomly excited primary system when provided with a particle damper that is operating in the vicinity of its optimum range of parameters.