Application of voice coil motors in active dynamic vibration absorbers

A dynamic vibration absorber reduces the influence of a force whose excitation frequency nearly coincides with the natural frequency of a rotating machine. However, the performance of this type of passive absorber can be affected by changes in the environment. In this paper, we describe a voice coil motor (VCM) that can serve as the actuator in an active dynamic vibration absorber which can be regulated for different conditions. With a VCM, suitable controllers can be designed for periodic excitation force rejection by using the characteristics of the notch filter in combination with the root-locus theorem. We have evaluated the performance of the active vibration absorber by both simulations and experiments.