A new electromagnetic shunt damping treatment and vibration control of beam structures

In this paper a new class of shunted electromagnetic damping treatment is proposed: a non-contact electromagnetic shunt damper (NC-EMSD). The NC-EMSD consists of an electromagnet attached to a host structure, a permanent magnet attached to the fixed boundary and an electrical impedance connected to the terminals of the electromagnet. The electromagnet and the shunt impedance constitute a closed circuit. When the structure vibrates, an induced electromotive force will be produced and results in the electromagnetic force as damping force, which can suppress the vibration of the structure. The model of NC-EMSD is built up based on the equivalent current method. The governing equations of the beam with NC-EMSD are established using Hamilton's principle. The capacitor-matching-inductance (CMI) method and the negative resistive capacitor-matching-inductance (NR-CMI) method are proposed, respectively. Then the vibration control of a cantilever beam with NC-EMSD is simulated and measured by CMI and NR-CMI control methods, respectively. The results show that both the CMI and NR-CMI can attenuate the vibration effectively, and the NR-CMI provides much better control performance than that by CMI. It is indicated as well from the studies that the decrease of either the gap between the magnet pair or the resistance of the shunt impedance contributes to the improvement of control performance.