VIBRATION ISOLATION

Machinery with moving parts can often cause vibration problems.  This may be noise, excessive deflection, wear, fatigue, etc.  A common solution is called VIBRATION ISOLATION.

The machine vibrates because it is being acted upon by a force fluctuating at  frequency.  The dynamic response of the machine is dependent on the magnitude of the force, but also on the ratio of the forcing frequency to the machines natural frequency.  Generally we want this ratio to be as high as possible giving  very low dynamic response to the fluctuating force.

The force is often due to a physical effect, such as gear tooth meshing, fan blade passing, pump reciprocation, cutting tool speed, etc.  There is little or nothing that can be done to affect these.

The frequency of the forcing is usually due to the speed that the machine is operating at.  Again, that cannot usually be altered.

What we CAN adjust is the natural frequency of the machine itself.  If we can LOWER the natural frequency of the machine we will reduce the dynamic response.

The natural frequency of the machine is dependent on its weight and stiffness.  It is not usually possible to alter the weight of a machine but we can quite easily alter its stiffness.  If we mount a machine on soft rubber mounts then we lower its stiffness and therefore lower its natural frequency and reduce the dynamic response.  This is VIBRATION ISOLATION.

This site is intended to put the engineer in touch with suppliers of vibration mounts and vibration pads which are collectively known as vibration isolators. There are also links to vibration measurement services, vibration consultants and other vibration isolation related parties.