Vibration design of a rigid body supported by orthogonal springs

Vibration analysis of a rigid body supported by in-parallel linear springs can be greatly simplified by utilizing the conditions for a plane of symmetry. The vibration modes of an oscillatory system having plane of symmetry are classified into the in-plane and out-of-plane modes. From the viewpoint of screw theory, they represent respectively the vibration axes perpendicular to the plane of symmetry and lying in the plane of symmetry. In this paper, the sets of orthogonal and mutually intersecting three springs are used as resilient support of a rigid body. The geometrical conditions for the system to have aplane of symmetry and diagonalized stiffness matrix are presented. From the orthogonality of the vibration modes with respect to the inertia matrix, the geometrical relation between the reaction wrenches and the vibration modes are derived. This geometrical relation is then used to get the cubic design equation for the design of out-of-plane modes. The numerical design example of engine mounts is presented in order to explain the suggested design technique.