Modal analysis and insights into damping phenomena of a special vibration chain

Vibration chains are of interest in many fields of practical applications. In this contribution, a modal analysis of the rather special Mikota’s vibration chain  is performed. Herein, focus is set on the mode shapes of this multibody oscillator, which was firstly introduced by Mikota as a solid body compensator in hydraulic systems for filtering out fluid flow pulsations. The mode shapes show interesting properties, e.g. an increase in the polynomial representing the coordinates of each mode shape with an increasing eigenfrequency associated with the respective mode shape. This and other properties are discussed exemplary. Some of these properties still have to be proven, which is the task of future work. Additionally, modal damping of Mikota’s vibration chain is discussed. Moreover, an approach for determining the damping matrix for given Lehr’s damping measures without knowing the mode shapes in advance is introduced. This approach involves the determination of a matrix root.