Launch Vibration Damping Using Slip in Pretensioned Coils

Abstract

Vibration management is important for the survivability of structures during launch, and is particularly challenging for large deployable space structures. Adding damping to a structure reduces the overall level of response excitation, which increases survivability. Structural damping occurs through the dissipation of energy during vibration. One such energy dissipation mechanism that can be utilized to increase damping is friction, such as the friction between slipping layers of a wound roll. In this paper, we study the vibration response of a structure, which has a pre-tensioned coil wound around it. Here, the damping is provided by friction between slipping layers in the pre-tensioned coil. An experiment is performed on a small-scale setup to evaluate the feasibility of this approach by measuring the frequency response and damping under different winding tensions. The same setup is used to measure layer slip during vibration, using a high speed camera and tracking targets to identify the regions with the largest slip, indicating higher contribution to energy dissipation. To confirm understanding of the damping mechanism, a 3D finite-element simulation is created in an attempt to capture the variation in frequency response and locations of slip with winding tension measured experimentally.

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