Bouncing behavior and dissipative characterization of a chain-filled granular damper

TL;DR

This study experimentally investigates how chain-filled dampers dissipate energy through bouncing behavior, revealing that longer chains and specific filling conditions enhance damping efficiency compared to particle-filled dampers.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental analysis of chain-filled dampers, highlighting the linear decrease of restitution coefficient with chain length and superior dissipation compared to particle-filled dampers.

Findings

Longer chains improve dissipative effects.

A minimum filling mass is needed to prevent rebound.

Chain-filled dampers outperform particle-filled dampers in energy absorption.

Abstract

We have experimentally investigated the bouncing behavior and damping performance of a container partially filled with granular chains, namely a chain-filled damper. The motion of the chain-filled damper, recorded by a particle tracing technology, demonstrates that the granular chains can efficiently absorb the collisional energy of the damper. We extract both the restitution coefficient of the first collision and the total flight time to characterize the dissipation ability of the damper. Two containers and three types of granular chains, different in size, stiffness and restitution coefficient, are used to examine the experimental results. We find that the restitution coefficient of the first collision of a single-chain-filled damper can linearly tend to vanish with increasing the chain length and obtain a minimum filling mass required to cease the container at the first collision (no rebound). When the strong impact occurs, the collisional absorption efficiency of a chain-filled damper is superior to a monodisperse-particle-filled damper. Furthermore, the longer the chains are, the better the dissipative effect is.