Abstract
Aircraft engine cases employ a thin-walled cylindrical structure for the reduction of fuel consumption. The machining of such parts requires support systems as cutting forces generate shell mode vibrations. There has been much research on the design of vibration suppression devices such as mass dampers, tuned mass dampers, active dampers, and fixturing stretch. Although such devices can offer excellent performance in vibration suppression, cost, and time for manufacturing and setup with tuning are problems. In this paper, the test results of a simple support system that suppresses the vibration modes of a cylindrical part are reported. A support element employs two-contacts in the curved surface. Multiple support elements are arranged according to the number of antinodes of shell modes. Each support has two rollers with a rotating head; the roller contact aligned in the curved surface. For the decision of the number of the support elements, modal analysis was carried out for a cylindrical part. An excitation test was carried out to evaluate the frequency response of a supported cylinder, and several peaks in frequency response were found to be suppressed. A cutting test with an endmill was carried out to evaluate the vibration levels. The experimental results show that the support can suppress forced vibration during machining.
