A Study on Friction Dampers and Their Contact Geometry Design

Increasing energy efficiency remains, alongside with lightweight design, one of the most important global goals of the technological development for the coming decades. Dry friction dampers allow a passive energy efficient damper design through their stick-slip characteristics. This work investigates three dampers: the dry friction lock-up damper, the prestressed sliding wedge damper, and the friction damper with polynomial contact surfaces. The dampers are investigated analytically an numerically. These systems utilize a prestress displacement or varying contact surface geometries in combination with dry friction to reduce vibrations. The dry friction combined with a prestress load allows a selective energy dissipation, whereas varying contact surfaces lead to robust dissipative forces. Furthermore, experiments with the dry friction lock-up damper and the prestressed sliding wedge damper are presented.