Vibration absorbers for chatter suppression: A new analytical tuning methodology

Vibration absorbers have been widely used to suppress undesirable vibrations in machining operations, with a particular emphasis on avoiding chatter. However, it is well known that for vibration absorbers to function effectively their stiffness and damping must be accurately tuned based upon the natural frequency of the vibrating structure. For general vibration problems, suitable tuning strategies were developed by Den Hartog and Brock over 50 years ago. However, the special nature of the chatter stability problem means that this classical tuning methodology is no longer optimal. Consequently, vibration absorbers for chatter mitigation have generally been tuned using ad hoc methods, or numerical or graphical approaches. The present article introduces a new analytical solution to this problem, and demonstrates its performance using time domain milling simulations. A 40–50% improvement in the critical limiting depth of cut is observed, compared to the classically tuned vibration absorber.