H-infinity optimization of a variant design of the dynamic vibration absorber—Revisited and new results

The H∞ optimum parameters of a dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) with ground-support are derived to minimize the resonant vibration amplitude of a single degree-of-freedom (sdof) system under harmonic force excitation. The optimum parameters which are derived based on the classical fixed-points theory and reported in literature for this non-traditional DVA are shown to be not leading to the minimum resonant vibration amplitude of the controlled mass. A new procedure is proposed for the H∞ optimization of such a dynamic vibration absorber. A new set of optimum tuning frequency and damping of the absorber is derived, thereby resulting in lower maximum amplitude responses than those reported in the literature. The proposed optimized variant DVA is also compared to a ground-hooked damper of the same damping capacity of the damper in the DVA. It is proved that the proposed optimized DVA has better suppression of the resonant vibration amplitude of the controlled system than both the traditional DVA and also the ground-hooked damper if the proposed design procedure of the variant DVA is followed.