The Variable Fulcrum Isolator: A Low Power, Nonlinear, Vibration Control Component

Abstract

A nonlinear, controllable vibration isolation device—the Variable Fulcrum Isolator (VFI)—is introduced. Methods of designing feedback control laws are presented. Computer simulations compare the rms acceleration and control power of the VFI with equivalent passive and linear active systems. The VFI achieves performance equal to the linear active system with less power for inputs composed of a small number of discrete frequencies. For very noisy inputs or for high performance systems which demand high control power, the linear active system is eventually superior. It is suggested that further study of the feedback system will yield improvement in these cases.