Experimental and numerical investigation of rubber damping ring and its application in multi-span shafting

A new approach for establishing the mechanical model of the rubber damping ring was studied numerically and experimentally. Firstly, parameters of Mooney–Rivlin and Prony series models of the rubber material were identified based on ISIGHT integrating with ANSYS and MATLAB, in which the rubber damping ring’s hysteresis loop was obtained by vibration experiment and ANSYS simulation, respectively; meanwhile, the dynamic stiffness and damping were calculated simultaneously by a parameter separation and identification method. Subsequently, the accuracy of the constitutive model parameters was verified experimentally. In the light of this, based on the experimental design and the approximate model method of the joint simulation platform, a mechanical model of dynamic stiffness and damping of the rubber damping ring was established. Finally, the rubber damping ring’s mathematical model was employed to perform a vibration reduction analysis in a multi-span shafting, where the numerical and experimental investigation was conducted, respectively. The results show that the theoretical and experimental error of vibration reduction rate is less than 17%, which verifies the accuracy of the mechanical model of the rubber damping ring.