A self-tunable dynamic vibration absorber: Parkinson´s Disease´s tremor suppression

An approach to Parkinson´s Disease´s (PD) tremor suppression based on a self-tunable Dynamic Vibration Absorber (DV A) was studied in this research, where two configurations, differed by a damping element, were addressed. The DV A was designed, mathematically modeled, simulated and experimentally validated when attached to a wood beam, coupled to a vibration exciter, which was used as an oscillating body. The control law for self-tuning was implemented and its effectiveness was investigated through experiments. Two types of external accelerations were used to test the system´s performance. The first one was sinusoidal oscillations, where the input frequency could be varied; and the second a PD´s waveform collected by sensors in patients and reproduced by a vibration exciter. The final configurations of the self-tunable DV A system was able to reduce oscillations in the order of 90% and 50%, respectively, for these tests.