Mechanics Research Communications 107 (2020) 103533

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Mechanics Research Communications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mechrescom

Vibration reduction of a rotating machine using resonator rings

L.S. Prado, T.G. Ritto∗
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Centro de Tecnologia, Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro, 21945-970, Brazil

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper proposes the application of resonator rings to reduce the amplitude of lateral vibrations of
Received 11 October 2018 rotating machines. The resonator is composed of four beams attached to a rigid cylinder at the shaft
Revised 11 April 2019
position and a flexible ring at the other extremity. A continuous model, discretized by means of the
Accepted 7 May 2020
finite element method, is considered with a shaft, one disk, two rigid bearings, and several resonator
Available online 31 May 2020
rings. The Campbell diagram and the response of the system in the frequency domain are analyzed. It
Keywords: turns out that the proposed resonator gives good results: the designed resonator is able to create a band
Rotor dynamics gap around a target critical speed.
Vibration reduction
Resonator rings
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Metamaterial

1. Introduction
High amplitude of vibration in rotating machines can lead to
the reduction of their efficiency, and, in the worst cases, structural
damage or catastrophic failure. Vibration problems arise, among
others, due to unbalance, misalignment, fluid induced vibration
(bearing and seal), and rubbing, Childs [5], Dimarogonas et al.[9],
Ishida and Yamamoto [12].
The parameters of a rotating system should be optimized to
avoid high vibration amplitude. That is, the values of a set of pa-
rameters (e.g. bearing coefficients) should be chosen such that nat-
ural frequencies are far away from the machine rotational speed.
In [16], a robust optimization strategy was proposed, where the
Campbell diagram was used and penalty functions were introduced
to penalize natural frequencies close to the imposed rotational
speed.
Different strategies are being developed to actively control the
vibration of a rotor. For instance, shape memory alloy wires were
used to actively control a flexible rotor [1]. A suspension composed
of the alloy was attached to the rotor-bearing system, and, con-
trolling the temperature, it is possible to conveniently change the
stiffness of the suspension. Another strategy is the application of
actively lubricated rotor/tilting-pad bearings [13].
Concerning passive control, an optimal design of viscoelastic
supports for rotating machines was developed by Ribeiro et al.
[15]. A hybrid optimization was applied, where the aim was to
minimize the unbalance frequency response. A different strategy
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: luansprado@poli.ufrj.br (L.S. Prado), tritto@mecanica.ufrj.br
(T.G. Ritto).
was used by Campos and Nicoletti [4], where a rotating dynamic
absorber is proposed to reduce the vibration of vertical rotor. A
6DOF model is developed and its response is compared with the
experimental response of a washing machine.
The goal of the present article is to analyze the passive con-
trol of a rotating machine introducing a new design of resonator
rings. And, different from Campos and Nicoletti [4], we consider
a continuous system, discretized by means of the finite element
method with solid elements, and several resonators are used to in-
duce a band gap. A frequency band gap [17] is created around a
critical speed of the machine. Doing so, the amplitude of vibration
is considerably reduced close to the chosen critical speed, what is
extremely desirable in rotating machines design.
The existence of band gaps in the mechanical context is ver-
ified in [19], for example. The presence of band gaps in a one-
dimensional mass spring system was attributed to a negative effec-
tive mass. The band gap could be tuned by choosing the resonator
mass and its natural frequency. A beam structure with beam-like
resonators was investigated by Xiao et al. [18], where the parame-
ters of the resonators were tuned to create the band gap. A general
procedure to estimate locally resonant band gap was developed by
Sugino et al. [17].
Keeping in mind the goal of creating a band gap around a crit-
ical speed of a rotating machine, the main contributions of the
present article are: (1) the design of resonator rings to be attached
to the shaft of a rotating machine; (2) the response analysis of the
rotating system, with the resonator rings attached to it, in terms of
the Campbell diagram and the frequency response. This arrange-
ment could be applied to several rotating machines, such as ma-
rine propulsion, or any machine with enough space to fit the res-
onators. The range of loads and speeds are flexible in the proposed

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mechrescom.2020.103533
0093-6413/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 L.S. Prado and T.G. Ritto / Mechanics Research Communications 107 (2020) 103533

mize stress concentration, fillets are used at the connections of the

beams with both inner and outer cylinders.
The main geometrical parameters of the resonators are shown
in Fig. 1. The parameters r2 , r3 , r4 and r5 are a function of the
prescribed shaft radius (r1 ), of the thin cylinder wall thickness (t),
and of the beam length (L).
As a geometrical restriction, the inner radius must be equal to
the shaft radius. In this first proposed design, the geometry is de-
fined by Eqs. (1) and (2). The inner radius has been chosen as one
tenth of the shaft radius. The outer cylinder inner radius is defined
as the sum of the shaft radius, thickness and effective length of the
beam L. The outer ring thickness has been chosen to be the same
as the inner cylinder. Finally, the fillet radius is defined as shown
in Eq. (2). If r1 = r3 there is no outer radius, therefore the fillet
radius is zero. The constant multiplying the expression is used to
adjust the fillet smoothness. Hence, if r1 and L are defined, all the
geometry of the resonator ring is known.

t1 = 0.1r1 , t2 = r1 /2 , r2 = r1 + t1 , (1)

r3 = r2 + L , r4 = r3 + t1 , r5 = 0.10(1 − r1 /r3 ) . (2)

Fig. 1. Proposed Resonator ring. 3. Mathematical model

A continuous model is applied for the rotor (shaft and disk, see
method, where the only obstacles are the geometrical restrictions Fig. 2) as well as for the resonator ring (Fig. 10). The equation of
and the material chosen for the resonators. motion is given by:
This paper is organized as follows. The design of the proposed ρ ü = b + σ , (3)
resonator ring is depicted in Section 2. The computational model
is discussed in Section 3. The numerical results are presented in where ρ is the density of the material, u the displacement field,
Section 4 and 5, and the concluding remarks are made in Section 6. b the body forces and σ the stress tensor. Under the framework
of linear elasticity theory, the constitutive law can be described by
Hooke’s law (Voigt notation):
2. Resonator design
σ = [C] , (4)
The proposed resonator ring is depicted in this section. The idea where  is the strain tensor and [C] equals to
is to attach resonator rings to the shaft of a rotating machine, such ⎡ ⎤
that the vibration of the shaft is reduced around a target frequency. (1 − ν ) ν ν 0 0 0
The resonator should rotate with the shaft but should not overload ⎢ ν (1 − ν ) ν 0 0 0 ⎥
⎢ ν ν (1 − ν ) 0 0 0 ⎥
the bearings. ⎢ ⎥,
⎢ 0 0 0 ( 1 − 2ν ) 0 0 ⎥
As a first attempt to design such resonator, we propose the ge- ⎣ ⎦
0 0 0 0 ( 1 − 2ν ) 0
ometry shown in Fig. 10: four beams attached to two thin cylin-
0 0 0 0 0 ( 1 − 2ν )
ders. The inner cylinder is used to attach the resonator at the shaft,
and the beams are connected to the outer ring. The bending mo- in which E is the elasticity Modulus of the material, and ν the Pois-
tion of the shaft may excite the beams of the resonator in the x son ratio. The system is discretized by means of the finite element
and y direction. For this reason four beams are considered in this method [20], where tetrahedral solid elements, with linear shape
construction: each pair acting in each direction. functions, are applied.
Beams under rotation have two main movements: chordwise Further simplifications could be done by using the Euler-
bending and flapwise bending [14]. The first happens in xy plane, Bernoulli beam assumption to the shaft [12], to the rotating beams
while the former in xz plane. In order to avoid undesired loads at inside the resonator [6,10], and to the rotating cylinder [3].
bearings, flapwise bending is limited. To do this, an outer ring is We decided to consider the full 3D model, where the shaft is
used to stiff the beam in the flapwise bending direction. To mini- simply supported at both ends, and the resonator is fixed at the

Fig. 2. A simply supported rotor. On the right, the disk.

 L.S. Prado and T.G. Ritto / Mechanics Research Communications 107 (2020) 103533 3

Fig. 3. Rotor Campbell diagram with critical speeds crit = {110 0, 2970 0} RPM. Continuous lines represent forward whirl and dashed line backward whirl. The critical speeds
occur when the thick black line intercepts other lines (red dots).

Fig. 4. First vibration mode of the resonator ring as a function L. Eight resonators was used and  was fixed at 170 0 0 RPM.

shaft. This model can be extended in future analyses. After assem- to the system. The system matrix in the state space is
bling the finite element matrices, we arrive in the discretized sys- 
0 I
tem, that can be written in the frequency domain as A() = (6)
M−1 K M−1 (C + G()) ,

x() = (2 M + i(C + G()) + K )−1 f() ,
where x is the vector with the displacements of the nodes, f is
the force vector, M is the mass matrix, K is the stiffness matrix, G
is the gyroscopic matrix, which depends on the machine rotational
speed, and C is the proportional damping matrix added a posteriori
(5) where I is the identity matrix and 0 is the zero entry matrix, both
with the same dimension as the mass matrix. It should be noticed
that the natural frequencies of the system depend on the rotational
speed . Usually the Campbell diagram is employed to visualize
the natural frequencies (ωn ) of the system, as a function of the
rotational speed, and also the critical speeds that happens when
ωn = .
4 L.S. Prado and T.G. Ritto / Mechanics Research Communications 107 (2020) 103533
Fig. 5. Resonator ring Campbell diagram. The third critical frequency is close to 440 Hz (26400 RPM). Continuous lines represent forward whirl and dashed line backward
whirl. The critical speeds occur when the thick black line intercepts other lines (red dots).
Fig. 6. Second (left) and third (right) modes associated to the natural frequency of
438 Hz.
It should be mentioned that a variety of factors influence the
critical speed of rotors, and might lead to instability problems. To
cite a few: fluid induced vibration (bearing and seal), steam whirl
[2], rubbing, Newkirk effect [7], and internal damping. These fac-
tors are not the object of investigation of the present article.
4. Resonator tuning
The data used in the application are: E = 200 × 109 Pa, ν =
0.29, Ddisk = 180 × 10−3 m, unbalance mass of 1kg distant 50 ×
10−3 from the shaft center, r1 = Dsha f t /2 = 10 × 10−3 m, Lsha f t =
0.8m, Ldisk = 0.4m. The Shaft mass is 1.97 kg, the disk mass 3.16 kg,
and the resonator mass 0.03 kg (for L=0.5 m). The frequency res-
olution of the response analyzed in the frequency band is 2 Hz.
And, the only parameter that must be tuned is the length of the
resonator ring L. It should be noticed that, to avoid long lengths L
of the resonator, only frequencies above 200Hz are considered. To
cope with low frequencies, one could change the resonator mate-
rial.
The first step to tune the resonator ring is to compute the crit-
ical frequencies of the rotating system (Fig. 2) without the res-
onators. Since the natural frequencies vary with the rotational
speed , the Campbell Diagram is analyzed for both the rotor and
the resonator ring.
Fig. 3 shows the Campbell diagram for the rotating system with
no resonators. For the considered frequency band of analysis, two
Fig. 7. System activating a combination of second and third modes.
critical speeds are observed, crit = {110 0, 2970 0} RPM. The target
critical speed chosen is t = 29700 RPM, for which the associated
natural frequency of the rotor is 495 Hz (of course, 29700 RPM =
495 Hz).
The main goal is to generate a band gap wide enough to contain
the target natural frequency ωt , removing it from the proximity of
the operational speed. To estimate the band gap, a relation devel-
oped by Yao et al. [19] and further generalized by Sugino et al.
[17] is used:
 f ∞ = ωr ( 1 + μ − 1 )/2π , (7)
where ωr is frequency in rad/s corresponding to the initial fre-
quency of the band gap, μ is the mass ratio, defined by μ =
mr /me , in which mr is the total resonator mass and me is the shaft
mass enclosed by each resonator. For ωr = 74.8 rad/s (=470 Hz)
and μ = 0.26, the band gap width found is around 60 Hz, which
would give a band of [470, 530] Hz.
Fig. 4 shows how the first natural frequency of the resonator
ring changes with its length L, for a fixed  = 170 0 0 RPM. As ex-
pected, the natural frequency decreases as the resonator length in-
creases, since it becomes more flexible.
The geometry of the resonator ring is completely defined from
L, see Eqs. (1) and (2). The resonator length L was chosen such that
one of its natural frequencies generate a band gap which contains
ωt , at the target critical speed t = 29700 RPM. After several nu-
 L.S. Prado and T.G. Ritto / Mechanics Research Communications 107 (2020) 103533 5

Fig. 8. Rotor with resonators.

Fig. 9. Influence of the resonators over the FRF. The band gap was successfully designed and could suppress the rotor critical frequency.

Fig. 10. Number of resonator influence over the gap width. The gap increases with the number of resonators.
6 L.S. Prado and T.G. Ritto / Mechanics Research Communications 107 (2020) 103533

Fig. 11. Transmittance as a function of (, L). The transmittance was defined as T () = 10log10 (|xo ()/xi ()|), being xo a point near the support and xi a point near the
disk.

Fig. 12. Complete Campbell diagram (no critical os fpim close to 29700 RPM. Continuous lines represent forward whirl and dashed line backward whirl. The critical speeds
occur when the thick black line intercepts other lines (red dots).

merical tests, we chose L = 0.05 m. With this configuration, a band
gap from about 460 Hz to about 530 Hz was obtained, as it will be
seen in the next section. The value of the natural frequency of the
resonator, that corresponds to the initial frequency of the theoret-
ical band gap, is 438 Hz.
Fig. 5 shows the Campbell diagram for the resonator ring alone,
which shows that the natural frequencies of the resonator also
vary with the rotational machine rotational speed. It is possible to
observe a natural frequency close to 440 Hz (third critical speed).
The second and the third resonator ring modes, associated with
the natural frequency of 438 Hz, are plotted in Fig. 6. Note that for
one vibration mode the vertical beams move and the horizontal
beams remain still, while the oposite occurs for the other vibra-
tion mode. Fig. 7 show a combination of both modes, when the
resonators are attached to the shaft. The activation of this reso-
nance will cause a band gap near the target frequency.
Summarizing, in the tuning process the resonator ring length L
is chosen such that a natural frequency of the resonator is close to
the target natural frequency of the rotor (obtained without the res-
onators). It should be emphasized that the natural frequencies of
the resonator, and of the rotor, depend on the machine rotational
speed .
 L.S. Prado and T.G. Ritto / Mechanics Research Communications 107 (2020) 103533
Fig. 13. Forces over the support as a function of .
5. Frequency response and band gaps
Eight resonators are placed symmetrically on the shaft, dis-
tant a = 0.75 × 10−3 m from each other, with t = 20 × 10−3 m, aL =
1.50 × 10−3 m, and the distance from the disk to the closest res-
onator is 0.25 × 10−3 m; see Fig. 8. The response of the system in
the frequency domain shows the band gap obtained for this con-
figuration, see Fig. 9. The amplitude of the response is attenuated
from about 260 0 026,0 0 0 RPM to about 330 0 033,0 0 0 RPM, which
corresponds to [433, 550] Hz.
Fig. 9 shows that the band gap obtained is wider than the one
calculated from Eq. (7). It should be noticed that the theoretical
value is just a reference value, and the band gap is influenced by
(1) the resonator position across the shaft, (2) the number of res-
onators, and (3) the gyroscopic effects.
Fig. 10 shows the band gap width as a function of the num-
ber of resonators. The gap width grows with the number of res-
onators due to the increase of mass ratio, which is in accordance
with [17,19].
Fig. 11 shows a map of the transmittance as a function of the
number of resonators N and the rotational speed . Depending on
the pair (N, ) the transmittance value is very different. A low
transmittance is observed close to 2970029,700 RPM, which was
the target rotational speed chosen to tune the resonator geome-
try. After tuning the resonator length L, this map helps on adjust-
ing the number of resonators and defining the critical rotational
speeds.
Fig. 12 shows the Campbell diagram of the whole system (shaft,
disk, and resonators). It is observed that the second critical speed
is now close to 2350 023,50 0 RPM, and the natural frequency of
the system associated to the second critical speed, moved from
495Hz to less than 400Hz, confirming that the tuning process was
successful. Another interesting point is that the lowest critical fre-
quency remained unchanged.
Finally, Fig. 13 shows the forces acting over the supports for dif-
ferent rotational speeds . Note that the order of magnitude of
the forces acting on the bearings are of the same order for the
system with and without the resonator rings. But the magnitude
changes considerably depending on the rotational speed. This im-
7
plies that, when the resonator rings were attached to the system,
one of the machine natural frequencies was moved to the left,
close to 2350 023,50 0 RPM. This is verified by Fig. 12 (second crit-
ical speed).
6. Concluding remarks
Aiming at reducing the vibration level of rotating machines, this
paper proposed a passive control strategy, where resonators rings
are designed to be attached to the shaft of a machine. Tuning the
resonator length, it is possible to create a band gap close to a tar-
get frequency. Since the system is rotating, the natural frequencies
of the rotor and of the resonator depend on the machine rotational
speed . Numerical analyses showed the impact of the inclusion of
the proposed resonators in the Campbell diagram and in the fre-
quency domain response of a flexible rotor.
As future investigations we intend to work on (1) uncertainty
analysis to quantify the impact of parametric uncertainties on the
band gap, (2) an experiment test rig to create a band gap in a ro-
tating system by including resonator rings, and (3) the effect of
coupling of flexural and longitudinal vibration.
In the framework of structural damage, the presence of cracks
across the shaft plays a major role, because the presence of a crack
introduces a local flexibility [8,11]. As one should imply, the con-
sideration of cracks adds non-linearities to the system. This means
that the critical frequencies of the system change, and the system
might become non-linear. Designing a resonator ring for this con-
dition would be more challenging.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest in preparing this ar-
ticle.
Acknowledgements
This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aper-
feiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) - Finance code 001
- Grant PROEX 803/2018, and the Brazilian agencies: Conselho Na-
cional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPQ) - Grants
8 L.S. Prado and T.G. Ritto / Mechanics Research Communications 107 (2020) 103533
303302/2015-1, 400933/2016-0, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de
Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) - Grant E-
26/201.572/2014.
References
[1] M. Alves, V. Steffen Jr., M. Santos, M. Savi, S. Enemark, I. Santos, Vibration con-
trol of a flexible rotor suspended by shape memory alloy wires, J. Vib. Acoust.
29 (11) (2018) 2309–2323.
[2] N. Bachschmid, P. Pennacchi, A. Vania, Steam-whirl analysis in a high pres-
sure cylinder of a turbo generator, Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 22 (1) (2008)
121–132.
[3] D. Beli, P. Silva, J. Arruda, Vibration analysis of flexible rotating rings using a
spectral element formulation, ASME J. Vib. Acoust. 137 (4) (2015) 41003.
[4] R. Campos, R. Nicoletti, Vibration analysis of flexible rotating rings using a
spectral element formulation, J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng. 37 (2015).
[5] D. Childs, Turbomachinery Rotordynamics: Phenomena, Modeling, and Analy-
sis, first ed., Wiley-Interscience, USA, 1993.
[6] J. Chung, H. Yoo, Dynamic analysis of a rotating cantilever beam by using the
finite element method, J. Sound Vib. 249 (1) (2002) 147–164.
[7] A. Dimarogonas, Newkirk effect: thermally induced dynamic instability of
high-speed rotors, in: Proceedings of the ASME Turbo Expo, 1973.
[8] A. Dimarogonas, C. Papadopoulos, Vibration of cracked shafts in bending, J.
Sound Vib. 91 (4) (1983) 583–593.
[9] A. Dimarogonas, S. Paipetis, T. Chondros, Analytical Methods in Rotor Dynam-
ics, Elsevier, 2013.
[10] G.Z. Wu, Coupling vibration analysis of rotating three-dimensional cantilever
beam, Comput. Struct. 179 (2017).
[11] R. Gasch, A survey of the dynamic behaviour of a simple rotating shaft with a
transverse crack, J. Sound Vib. 160 (1) (1993) 313–332.
[12] Y. Ishida, T. Yamamoto, Linear and Non-Linear Rotordynamics:A Modern Treat-
ment with Applications, second ed., Wiley, USA, 1984.
[13] R. Nicoletti, I. Santos, Frequency response analysis of an actively lubricated
rotor/tilting-pad bearing system, J. Eng. Gas Turbines Power 127 (3) (2005)
638–645.
[14] O. Ozdemir, M. Kaya, Flapwise bending vibration analysis of a rotating tapered
cantilever bernoulli-euler beam by differential transform method, J. Sound Vib.
289 (2006).
[15] E. Ribeiro, J. Pereira, C. Bavastri, Passive vibration control in rotor dynamics:
optimization of composed support using viscoelastic materials, J. Sound Vib.
351 (2017).
[16] T. Ritto, R. Lopez, R. Sampaio, J.S. de Cursi, Robust optimization of a flexible
rotor-bearing system using the campbell diagram, Eng. Optim. 43 (1) (2010)
77–96.
[17] C. Sugino, Y. Xia, S. Leadenham, M. Ruzzene, A. Erturk, A general theory
for bandgap estimation in locally resonant metastructures, J. Sound Vib. 406
(2017).
[18] Y. Xiao, J. Wen, G. Wang, X. Wen, Theoretical and experimental study of locally
resonant and bragg band gaps in flexural beams carrying periodic arrays of
beam-like resonators, J. Vib. Acoust. 135(4) (410 06) (20 08) 1–17.
[19] S. Yao, X. Zhou, G. Hu, Experimental study on negative effective mass in a 1d
mass-springer system, J. Phys. 10 (43020) (2008) 1–11.
[20] O. Zienkiewicz, R. Taylor, The Finite Element Method, Butterworth-Heinemann,
England, 20 0 0.