Damping of Rotating Beams with Particle Dampers: Discrete Element Method Analysis

The performance of particle dampers (PDs) under centrifugal loads was investigated. A test bench consisting of a rotating cantilever beam with a particle damper at the tip was developed (D. N. J. Els, AIAA Journal 49, 2228-2238 (2011)). Equal mass containers with different depths, filled with a range of uniform-sized steel ball bearings, were used as particle dampers. The experiments were duplicated numerically with a discrete element method (DEM) model, calibrated against the experimental data. The DEM model of the rotating beam with a PD at the tip captured the performance of the PD very well over a wide range of tests with different configurations and rotation velocities.