MATEC Web of Conferences 148, 11001 (2018) https://doi.org/10.

1051/matecconf/201814811001
ICoEV 2017

An inerter-based active vibration isolation system

Neven Alujević1, Damjan Čakmak1,*, Hinko Wolf1, and Marko Jokić1
1Fakultet strojarstva i brodogradnje, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Ivana Lučića 5, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract. This paper presents a theoretical study on passive and active vibration isolation schemes using
inerter elements in a two degree of freedom (DOF) mechanical system. The aim of the work is to discuss
basic capabilities and limitations of the vibration control systems at hand using simple and physically
transparent models. Broad frequency band dynamic excitation of the source DOF is assumed. The purpose
of the isolator system is to prevent vibration transmission to the receiving DOF. The frequency averaged
kinetic energy of the receiving mass is used as the metric for vibration isolation quality. It is shown that the
use of inerter in the passive and active vibration isolation schemes considered enhances the isolation effect.

1 Introduction motor shunted with an appropriate electrical circuit [4].

An inertance-like behaviour can also be accomplished
Inerter is a one port element in mechanical networks through a scheme in which hydraulic fluid is accelerated
which resists relative acceleration across its two [5, 6] with a piston which pushes the fluid through a
terminals [1, 2]. The coefficient of this resistance is helical channel [6].
called inertance and is measured in kilograms. An Inerters can be very useful in vibration absorber
appealing property of inerters is that they can be systems. Performance of vibration absorbers, especially
designed and realized in practice having their inertance Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) is known to very much
significantly larger than their mass [1, 2]. This opens depend on the proof mass added to a primary structure to
many interesting possibilities so that many authors reduce its vibration. As this mass is added to structures
reported on how to design and use inerters to suppress exclusively to control their vibrations, it is penalized in
mechanical vibrations [1-20]. lightweight automotive and aerospace applications [13,
The concept of “relative mass” has been considered 14]. In this context the use of inerter elements can be
by Schönfeld [21] in connection with mechanical– interesting given the fact that their inertance can be
electrical analogies. He mentioned the possibility of a significantly larger than their mass. Consequently a
two-terminal mechanical inertance and gave a number of new concepts have arisen. These include
rudimentary scheme of a physical realization of the tuned inerter damper (TID), tuned mass–damper–inerter
concept. Smith [1], and Smith and Wang [2] developed (TMDI), and inerter–based dynamic vibration absorber
this idea by investigating how to design such a device in (IDVA) [15-19]. Various applications have been
practice and pointed out a number of peculiarities that considered using tuned inerter dampers including
the new element brings into a mechanical network. The vibration reduction of cables in cable-stayed bridges [15,
authors instilled that inerter is the analogue of the 16].
capacitor element in electrical networks [2]. Therefore, Dynamic vibration absorbers can be made active by
adding the inerter to classical dampers and springs fills using inertial actuators with a velocity or velocity +
an empty niche enabling a complete synthesis of passive displacement feedback control scheme. Inertial actuators
mechanical networks [2, 21]. are typically designed with a low mounted natural
Smith and Wang designed their inerter using a frequency in order to widen the range of frequencies
plunger sliding in a cylinder which drives a flywheel where they can efficiently actuate. However, the low
through a rack, pinion and gears [2]. Alternatively, an natural frequency is usually associated with increased
electromagnetic transducer (voice coil, linear motor) can static sags. This limits the applicability of inertial
be shunted with electrical impedance. If the total shunt actuators in presence of large accelerations (i.e. vehicle
impedance is properly tuned, then the whole manoeuvring or centrifugal accelerations in rotating
electromechanical network theoretically behaves exactly structures [22-24]).
as if it incorporated an ideal inerter mounted in series Zilletti investigated an active vibration absorber
with a parallel spring damper-pair [3]. In this context, system in which the inerter is attached in parallel with
self-powered configurations employing a simultaneous the suspension spring, damper, and the actuator [20].
active control and energy harvesting have been The author has shown that with such a design it is
considered to synthesize mechatronic inerters [3]. possible to reduce the natural frequency of the actuator
Another type of mechatronic inerter utilizes a rotary DC without increasing the proof mass or reducing the

*
Corresponding author: damjan.cakmak@fsb.hr
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
MATEC Web of Conferences 148, 11001 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201814811001
ICoEV 2017

suspension stiffness. He considered only an idealized

inerter element, which neglects the inertial, stiffness and
damping of the gearing mechanism. However, Kras and
Gardonio studied the effective weight and dynamic
effects of an inerter element composed by a single
flywheel which is either pinned or hinged to the base
mass or to the proof mass of the actuator [25].
Inerters can also be very useful in vibration isolation
systems. In this sense, many authors focused their efforts
on improving vehicle suspension systems using inerters
[2], [7-10]. Further applications of inerters include
vibration isolation in civil engineering structures, such as
multi-storey buildings under earthquake base excitation
[11]. In vibration isolation problems it is often necessary
to tune the impedance of the isolator elements based on
some optimization criteria. This can be done by either
Fig. 1. The two degree of freedom lumped mass active
minimizing maxima of the response (minimax or H∞ vibration isolation system.
optimization), or by minimizing the energy in the
response signals (H2 optimization) [12]. More complex systems may also be representable by
In this paper an active vibration isolation problem is the general configuration shown in Fig. 1. [27-30].
considered. It is shown that the use of inerter can The active part of the vibration isolation system is
significantly improve the stability and performance of realized through a skyhook damping unit [30, 31]. The
the active vibration isolation system in certain situations. velocity sensor is mounted onto mass m2 in order to
In particular, it is shown analytically on a simplified realize a disturbance rejection control scheme. In this
model problem that the use of inerter enables successful scheme the actuator is driven with a signal proportional
active vibration isolation in a family of mechanical to the negative absolute velocity of the receiving body
systems that are otherwise difficult to control. This amplified by a constant control gain g. The equations of
family of systems has been referred to as subcritical 2 motion can be written in the matrix form as [32]
DOF systems [26]. Subcritical systems are those Mx  Cx  Kx  F, (1)
characterized by the natural frequency of the receiving where M is the mass matrix, K is the stiffness matrix, C
body larger than that of the source body. In such is the damping matrix, x(t), x(t) and x(t) are the
vibration isolation problems the use of inerter is shown displacement, velocity and acceleration column vectors
to stabilize the feedback loop and therefore to enable a respectively, and F(t) is excitation column vector.
remarkable active vibration isolation effect. In addition Assuming a simple harmonic excitation and expressing
to the active vibration isolation system, an inerter-based the excitation and the steady-state response in the
and an inerter-free passive isolator scheme are proposed exponential form F  t   Fˆ e jt and x  xˆe jt, Eq. (1) can be
and analysed, with the aim of establishing fair differentiated with respect to time t and written as
benchmarks for the evaluation of the performance of the x  j   Y  j  F  j , (2)
where x  j   j x  j  is the velocity vector, S(jω) is
active isolators studied later in the paper.
In each system, either active of passive, tuneable
the dynamic stiffness matrix and Y  j   j S  j  is
1
parameters are adjusted in order to minimize the kinetic
energy of the receiving body per unit, spectrally white, the mobility matrix containing four frequency response
dynamic excitation of the source body. functions (FRFs) between velocities and forces. With the
aim of more general approach, the element, Y21, of the
mobility matrix in Eq. (2) can be expressed in the
2 Mathematical model following dimensionless form
B0   j  B1   j  B2   j  B3
2 3

As shown in Fig. 1., the problem studied is represented  21  j   , (3)

A0   j  A1   j  A2   j  A3   j  A4
2 3 4

by a lumped parameter two degree of freedom (DOF)

mechanical system. The system consists of two masses where coefficients A0...A4 and B0…B3 are given by
A0  1   1        B0  0
m1 and m2 coupled by a spring k2, a viscous damper c2
and an inerter of inertance b2. The inerter produces a  A1 22   1    1   B1  1 , (4a-i)
force proportional to the relative acceleration between  A2 1  1   12      2  1   B2  22
masses m1 and m2. The two masses are attached to fixed A3 22  1    1   B3  12
reference bases via the two mounting springs k1 and k3.
A4  1  12  2  1  
The lower mass m1 is excited by the disturbance force
F1. It is assumed that the force F1 has characteristics of where
2 2
an ideal white noise and that the power spectral density    3  c2 g m2 b2 
  2
 ,    , 2  ,  , 1  , 2  , , (5a-g)
(PSD) of the force equals one over all frequencies. The 
 1 
 1 2 m k
1 1
c2 m1 m2 1

effects of dampers between the source mass m1 and the and  21  m11Y21 is now the dimensionless transfer
ground and between the receiving mass m2 and the mobility. In Eqs. (5a-g), α and β are squared natural
ground are neglected i.e. c1 ≈ c3 ≈ 0. frequency ratios, η2 is the damping ratio, λ is the

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MATEC Web of Conferences 148, 11001 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201814811001
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feedback gain normalized with respect to the passive Parameters that characterize this example system
damping coefficient, and μ1 and μ2 are the mass and from Fig. 1. are α = 2, β = 5 and μ1 = 1/2. The variation
inertance ratios respectively. Furthermore, Ω is of the passive damping ratio shows that it is possible to
dimensionless circular frequency normalized with optimise the system so that the receiving body vibration
respect to the natural frequency of the uncoupled source measured through the metrics defined by Eq. (7) is
body Ω1 (as if the source body was uncoupled by minimised. This is because: i) for a small damping ratio
removing spring k2), Ω3 is the natural frequency of the the response is very large at resonances (solid line); ii)
uncoupled receiving body (as if the receiving body was for a very large damping ratio the damper locks the
uncoupled by removing spring k2), and Ω2 is the natural source and receiving bodies and a new lightly damped
frequency of the receiving body as if it was attached to a resonance is generated (dash-dotted line). It is therefore
fixed reference base through the spring of stiffness k2 best to use: iii) the optimal damping ratio which
only. The three natural frequencies Ω1…Ω3 are thus minimises the kinetic energy of the receiving body. The
k1 k2 k3 optimal damping ratio corresponds to the dashed line in
1  , 2  , 3 . (6)
m1 m2 m2 Fig. 2. Also shown in the figure are five frequency
Given that the excitation force F1 with unit power ranges, 1-5, in which the variation of the damping ratio
spectral density (PSD) has been assumed, the specific causes either an increase or a reduction of the amplitude
kinetic energy of the receiving body (per unit mass, per of the transfer mobility function. The corresponding
unit excitation force) can now be calculated as bordering frequencies are designated by letters a-d. In
 particular, around resonances the increase in damping
   j 
2
Ik  21 d , (7) decreases the vibration transmission, but elsewhere it
 increases the vibration transmission. Thus the optimal
according to the Parseval's identity. The specific kinetic damping ratio exists.
energy index Ik is used throughout this study as the
measure of the performance of broad frequency band
vibration isolation. Formulae for integrating ratios of 3.2 With inerter
polynomial functions of a complex variable can be found
Fig. 3. shows the amplitude of the dimensionless transfer
in [33]. Throughout the paper it is investigated how can
mobility  21 for the same parameters as in Fig. 2., except
the kinetic energy of the receiving body be minimised by
minimising the specific kinetic energy index in Eq. (7). that an inerter is now employed. A minimisation of the
specific kinetic energy index has been carried out with
respect to the inertance and the damping. The
3 Passive control minimisation indicates that there is an optimal inertance-
damping pair which minimises the receiving body
In this section, two benchmark passive vibration kinetic energy. The results in Fig. 3 are shown for the
isolation schemes are considered. In the first scheme, an optimised inertance, however the damping ratio has been
inerter is not employed and in the second, an inerter of varied from suboptimal towards the optimal one and
dimensionless inertance μ2 is considered. above it. Anti-resonance effect at the dimensionless
frequency of A    2 (corresponding to the
3.1 Without inerter dimensional frequency A  k2 / b2 ) is observed (solid
line) which is a result of using the inerter.
The modulus of the transfer mobility  21 is shown in
Fig. 2. for three values of the passive damping ratio η2: a
relatively small one (solid line), a medium (dashed line)
and a large damping ratio (dash-dotted line).

Fig. 3. Isolation system performance with inerter b2 (μ2 = μ2opt):

Transfer mobility function  21  j  , η2 = 0 (solid line),
η2 = η2opt2 (dashed line), η2 = 100η2opt2 (dash-dotted line).
The use of inerter improves the broadband passive
Fig. 2. Isolation system performance without inerter b2 vibration isolation performance by ~ 3 dB for the case
(μ2 = 0): Transfer mobility function  21  j  , η2 = η2opt1/100 considered where η2 = η2opt2 and μ2 = μ2opt in comparison
(solid line), η2 = η2opt1 (dashed line), η2 = 100η2opt1 (dash-dotted to the system studied in the previous subsection. This
line).

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MATEC Web of Conferences 148, 11001 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201814811001
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improvement certainly depends on the parameters that same passive system but this time employing an inerter
characterise the system without inerter and the particular with dimensionless inertance of μ2 =4.
vibration isolation problem at hand.

4 Active control

4.1 Stability analysis

In this section, two active vibration isolation schemes are
analysed with respect to the stability of the feedback
control. In the first scheme the inerter is not used, and in
the second it is. The stability study is carried out using
the Routh-Hurwitz criterion [34, 35].
If the inerter is not used then the analysis of the
stability indicates that there are two basic families of
systems. The first family can be referred to as
Fig. 5. Dependence of Hurwitz coefficients H1 (solid line),
supercritical and it is characterized by β < 1 (the natural H2 (dashed line), H3 (dash-dotted line) and A1 (dotted line)
frequency of the source body is higher than that of the magnitude on active damping ratio λ with inerter b2 (μ2 ≠ 0)
receiving body). The systems belonging to this group and βII > 1: μ2 > α.
allow for the implementation of unconditionally stable
active vibration isolation scheme based on the direct
feedback of the absolute velocity of the receiving body 4.2 Performance without inerter
even if the inerter is not used. The second family is Fig. 6. shows the amplitude of the dimensionless transfer
characterized by β > 1 and it can be referred to as
mobility  21 of a subcritical system characterised by the
subcritical. The systems belonging to this group do not
parameters α = 1/2, β = 5 and μ1 = 1/2 and η2 = 0.02. The
allow for the implementation of unconditionally stable
dimensionless feedback gain λ is varied from zero to 1.5.
absolute velocity feedback scheme, as the feedback loop
is only conditionally stable with a limited maximum
feedback gain g, i.e. λ.
Fig. 4. shows the Hurwitz principal diagonal minors
plotted as a function of the dimensionless feedback gain
λ when no inerter is used. The system is subcritical with
characteristic parameters α = 2, μ1 = 1/2, η2 = 1 and β =
5.

Fig. 6. Subcritical isolation system performance without inerter

b2 (μ2 = 0) and βII > 1: Transfer mobility function  21  j  , λ = 0
(solid line), λ = 0.5 (dashed line), λ = 1 (dash-dotted line),
λ = 1.5 (dotted line).
A significant overshoot can be observed in the
vicinity of the first dimensionless natural frequency Ωn1
for rising λ, which also results with system instability if
the feedback gain is further increased. Thus the
Fig. 4. Dependence of Hurwitz coefficients H1 (solid line),
H2 (dashed line), H3 (dash-dotted line) and A1 (dotted line) performance of the active control scheme considered is
magnitude on active damping ratio λ without inerter b2 (μ2 = 0): jeopardised by the limited stability of the feedback loop.
βII > 1.
A limited stability range as a function of λ is 4.3 Performance with inerter
observed. By a detailed analysis of the sign of the
Fig. 7. shows the subcritical system transfer mobility
Hurwitz principal diagonal minors it can be shown that
amplitude  21 with α = 1/2, β = 2, μ1 = 1/2 and η2 = 0.02,
by including the inerter with inertance μ2 > α, a
subcritical system becomes unconditionally stable for equipped with an inerter of inertance μ2 = 2. Therefore,
any chosen positive λ. This is illustrated in Fig. 5. on the an inertance large enough to stabilize the feedback loop
is used (μ2 > α).

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the uncoupled source body is below the natural

frequency of the uncoupled receiving body. The range of
stable feedback gains is limited which results in poor
vibration isolation performance. However with the
inclusion of the inerter, broadband active vibration
isolation can also be achieved in the subcritical family of
systems. In fact, it is shown that the minimum inertance
to stabilize the loop is proportional to the stiffness of the
isolator spring and inversely proportional to the squared
natural frequency of the source body.

This project has received funding from the European Union's

Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the
Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 657539
STARMAS.
Fig. 7. Subcritical isolation system performance with inerter b2
(μ2 ≠ 0), βII > 1 and μ2 > α: Transfer mobility function  21  j  ,
λ = 0 (solid line), λ = 5 (dashed line), λ = 10 (dash-dotted line), References
λ = 20 (dotted line).
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