Charactarization of Vibration Absorber for Mounting

Sensors on Micro Air Vehicle

Siddhartha Srivastava
Undergraduate student
sidsriv@iitk.ac.in

Anubhav Dwivedi
Undergraduate student
danubhav@iitk.ac.in
Abhijit Verma
Undergraduate student
abhiver@iitk.ac.in

Abhishek
Assistant Professor
abhish@iitk.ac.in

Department of Aerospace Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Kanpur, India



Abstract The development of a vibration isolation system for
mounting sensors onboard a rotary wing Micro Air Vehicle
(MAV) is discussed in this paper. Rotor based MAVs are prone
to vibrations which are primarily composed of frequencies equals
to rotor rpm and integer multiples of the product of number of
blades and rotor rpm. Such vibrations severely restrict the use of
accelerometers as an effective sensor for measurement of vehicle
rigid body accelerations. In general, various types of foam are
used to support on-board sensors. However effectiveness of such
material is not well established. The variation of transmissibility
with different type of foams is studied and a selection criterion is
developed for selection of appropriate vibration isolating
material. This criterion proposes more than 50% reduction in the
amplitude of vibration transmitted to the IMU during flight
which is achieved using polyurethane foam in current work.
Keywords- Micro Aerial vehicle, Vibration, Sensor Mounting
Package, Foams.
I. INTRODUCTION
A rapid increase in the interest for small unmanned aerial
vehicles commonly known as Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) has
been an outcome of the recent development of micro sensors
and actuators. Applications ranging from military surveillance
missions to civil search and rescue tasks have driven great
research focus towards its development. Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) defines MAV as an
aircraft that would have dimension lesser than 6 inches, would
weigh approximately 100 g (with at least 20 g payload) and
have an endurance of 60 minutes [1]. While these goals are far
from being realized, the term MAV is widely used for
referring to miniature flight vehicles.
The vertical take-off, landing and hovering capabilities of
rotorcraft puts them on top of this category. Feedback from
sensors is required for development of an autonomous flight
control system for these vehicles. Noise is caused in these
sensors due to the vibrations inherently present in rotor based
systems. These vibrations are primarily transmitted from the
main rotor to the body. While satisfactory result can be
obtained by using existing digital filters for noise cancellation
like using moving average filter etc. But, this comes at the
expense of increased control loop time. This increased loop
time may pose great challenge in designing response for
actuators. With the inclusion of a passive mechanical system,
the need for extra processing and subsequent memory usage
can be reduced to a great extent. Such a system can pave way
for designing more robust actuator response system.
Foam being a very low density material can be exploited
for this purpose because of its damping properties. This
property of foam is being utilized in automobile industry for
manufacturing of seats [2, 3]. This warrants investigation of
different types of foam for making an appropriate choice for
the vibration isolation system for a MAV. Several models have
been proposed for describing and quantifying the properties of
cellular materials like foam ranging from works by Rusch
(1969), Ashby (1983), Gibson and Ashby (1982), Gibson and
Ashby (1988) [47]. Goga.V [8] suggests a spring-damper
model for the foam. A simplified version of this model is being
used in this study.
To study the foam properties, a simple experiment is
devised. First, different foam samples are sandwiched between
an IMU sensor and a vibrating platform which is excited with a
known frequency using a shaker. Next, sensor data read from
the accelerometer corresponding to 5, 10, 15 and 20 Hz
excitation of each foam sample is wirelessly sent to the Ground
Station Computer for storage and analysis. Fast Fourier
Transformation (FFT) is carried out on the stored data to
isolate the amplitude of constituent frequencies of the vibration
waveform. Once the amplitude of constituent frequencies is
known, the effect of damper on the vibration is studied in great
detail. Finally, various types of soft and light foam samples are
systematically tested and characterized to identify an optimal
choice for rotor based MAV application.
II. MODELLING AND SELECTION CRITERIA
A. Mechanical Model for Foam Analysis
Maxwell material model and Kelven-Voight material
model have been used to study viscoelastic materials. A
Maxwell model idealizes foam using a spring and damper in
series while Kelven-Voight model uses a spring and damper in
parallel as shown in Fig 1(a,b).


Figure 1: a) Maxwell Model b) Kelvin-Voight Model
The stress-strain curve for foam exhibits three definite
features namely, linear elastic, plateau and densification
region as shown in Fig 2. Goga.V and B.Huko suggests a
spring-damp model for the analysis of foam under uniaxial
compression [8]. Three systems in parallel are proposed, one is
the Maxwell arm containing a spring (stiffness k) and a dashpot
(viscosity c) in series while other two are springs of stiffness k
p

and k
d
respectively. The first and the second region of foam
compression deformation can be described by the stress-strain
response of Maxwell model, but only if the plateau stress is
constant. A spring of stiffness k
p
is added to model the slope in
plateau region. Densification region is controlled by the last
spring with a nonlinear stiffness k
d
.

Figure 2: Typical stress-strain curve for foam[8]
The transformation from linear elastic to plateau is
achieved at approximately 5% compression. Thus a
simplification in model is proposed for vibrational amplitude
less than 5%. The effective system for these vibrations can be
modeled using Kelvin-Voight model due to its applicability in
organic polymers and vibration isolation systems as shown in
Fig. 1(b).
B. Response function and Transmissibility for excitation in
Maxwell model

The mechanical system was modeled using a motion
excitation model on a Kelvin-Voight spring-damper model as
shown in Fig. 3, the governing equation to which is given by
Eq.(1).

Figure 3: Motion excitation model



(1)

Where m is the mass of the wireless unit and the accelerometer
along with the microcontroller, c is the coefficient of viscous
damping, k is the spring constant, x(t) is the displacement of
mass m and y(t) is the displacement of vibration inducer. For
the sake of simplicity, it is assumed that the motion of inducer
is harmonic and can be expressed in the form

(2)
Here is the excitation frequency. Eq. (1) can be rewritten in
a more suitable form as:

(3)

Where , is the viscous damping factor and
is the natural frequency of the undamped
oscillation. The steady state solution for the given equation
can be conveniently calculated as the following [9,10],

Figure 4: Frequency response of systemfor different frequencies. [10]




0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
% Strain
Densification
Linear Elasticity
Plateau Region
Stress

(4)

Where (5)

And (6)

A considerable insight into the system can be gained by
examining the frequency response as shown in Fig. 4.
Based on this figure, following conclusion on the frequency
response for vibration isolation can be made:
1. Since the mass under vibration of external excitation is
constant; the value of natural frequency in each of the
cases would only depend on stiffness of foam. In order to
attain an effective in-flight vibration suppression a foam
is chosen which causes the natural frequency of the setup
(accelerometer and microcontroller) to be in a manner that
(7)
Where is the angular frequency of vibrations at
take-off.

Since take-off is effectively at same RPM for different
foams, the value of can be treated as constant
for a particular rotorcraft.
2. The damping coefficient of the foam also needs to be
appropriately chosen, because a very high value of
damping coefficient would cause a low peak at the
resonance but not effective amplitude reduction during
takeoff. Thus effective foam could be chosen by
comparing its amplitude response after takeoff and its
peak response.
III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

Experimental setup used for this paper is shown in Fig. 5.
Vibration isolation system and the sensor package are mounted
over a shaker using a thick acrylic block for rigid support.
Different foams were successively placed between acrylic
block and sensor package and respective data were collected on
an off-board computer for further analysis. Amplitude feedback
was continuously taken from carefully calibrated laser sensors
to ensure that constant amplitude of vibration was maintained.
A. Shaker
An electro-dynamic shaker was used to generate vibrations in
the setup. Knob setting for frequency was set to 5 to 25 Hz.
For setting the amplitude, a pre-calibrated laser sensor was
used for measurement and manual adjustments were done to
achieve the required amplitude.
B. Sensor Package
An ITG3200/ADXL345 Combo-board 6-DOF Inertial
Measurement Unit was chosen as the sensor for measuring
vibration for the experiment. The chip weighs 3gm and gives a
sampling rate of 50Hz for a design range of +-4g [11]. Nyquist
rate for this sampling rate was calculated to be 25Hz. This
facilitated a Fourier analysis of up to 25Hz of vibrational
frequencies [12]. The connection was established between the
sensor and micro-controller was established using I2C
communication protocol

Figure 5: Experimental setup for Foamtesting
Arduino Mini Pro was chosen as the onboard micro-
controller for the experiment due to its light weight. It uses
ATmega 328 processor for computation [13]. Xbee S1 was
used for wireless communication. Raw data was
transmitted at a baud rate of 9600. Another Xbee was used
with the Computer to receive this data. Fourier analysis and
other computations were carried out using Mathwork's
MATLAB software in the experiment setup. Figure 6
shows the complete sensor package.

Figure 6: Sensor package mounted over shaker
IV. FOAM CHARACTERIZATION
Foam being extremely light weight is a good choice as a
passive mechanical system for vibration isolation for a micro
aerial vehicle. There are a variety of foams available in the
market and systematic criteria for determining their vibration
isolation capability for coaxial rotorcraft application is
demonstrated here. The following foams are considered for the
vibration isolation [14]:
TABLE 1: DIFFERENT TYPES OF FOAMS
Foam Density(lbs./ft
3
)
Polyurethane 1.2
Evlon 2.2
High density foam 1.9
Rebond 6.0
Memory foam 4.0

The foam sections with depth of 1cm and a cross section of
6cm x 4cm were used for experiments. The microcontroller
and the accelerometer along with the X-bee module for
wireless communication was mounted on the foam and then
attached to the vibration set up. Raw accelerometer data was
collected for the excitations of frequencies of 5, 10, 15 and 20
Hz. The amplitude of excitation was kept constant throughout
the experiments at 0.4 mm.
Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) was carried out on this data
to get the constituents frequencies of the vibration waveform
for different foams. The amplitudes of the excitation
frequencies were considered for calculation of transmissibility
of the system. FFT of accelerometer data was done for no
foam condition to get data for forcing input. Calculation of
transmissibility was done using following equation:

(8)

Where is the amplitude of frequency in Fourier plane.
Transmissibility of different foams for frequencies of 5, 10, 15
and 20 Hz are shown in Fig. 7.

Figure 7: Transmissibility of different foams at different frequencies

Curve Fitting was done for this data using curve fitting tools in
MATLAB. Following equation was used as the fitting
equation.
(9)

Stiffness and damping coefficient were estimated from graph.
Figure 8 shows curve fitted transmissibility variation. Table 2
shows estimated stiffness and damping coefficient values for
the foam. Natural frequencies of different systems were also
calculated. Mass of the electronic package was kept constant
at 25 g.
TABLE 2: ESTIMATED FOAM CHARACTERISTICS FROM CURVE FITTING
Foam Stiffness
(Nm
-1
)
Damping
constant
(Kg/s)
Natural
Frequency
(Hz)
Polyurethane 0.313 0.070 3.538
Evlon 0.315 0.189 2.749
High density
foam
0.583 0.081 4.829
Rebond 0.503 1.182 6.876
Memory
foam
0.191 0.124 2.764



Figure 8: Estimated transmissibility of different foams

Ratio of transmissibility and peak transmissibility were
calculated for different frequencies and foams and is shown in
Fig. 9. It can be concluded from Fig. 8 that vibration at
frequency of 20 Hz which corresponds to a takeoff rotor RPM
of 1200, Rebond and Evlon foam give very high
transmissibility due to their high damping constant. On the
other hand there is more than 50% reduction for other foams
denoted by small values of transmissibility for a wide range of
operating frequencies.

0 5 10 15 20 25
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
Frequency (Hz)
Transmissibility


Polyurethane
High density
Memory Foam
Evlon
Rebond
0 5 10 15 20 25
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
2
Frequency (Hz)


Polyurethane
High Density
Memory Foam
Evlon
Rebond
Transmissibility

Figure 9: Ratio of transmissibility and maximumtransmissibility of different
foams

The ratio of transmissibility to the maximum transmissibility
is shown in Fig. 9. It is observed to be high for memory foam
and high density foam in comparison to the polyurethane foam
for a large range of frequency.
Thus, Polyurathene foam of dimensions 1cm x 4cm x 6cm is
chosen as the best material for the vibration isolation system
for an effective payload of 25gm and Take-off vibrational
frequency of 20 Hz. It is expected to work well for other
frequencies.
Following criteria is proposed for choosing an choosing an
appropriate foam for a hovercraft vehicle
1. Transmissibility of system at takeoff must be less than
50%.
2. Ratio of transmissibility and maximum transmissibility
should be minimum.

V. CONCLUSION
The performance of different foams for a vibration isolation
system was studied. Transmissibility for five type of foams
namely: Polyurethane, Evlon, High Density, Rebond and
memory foam were calculated. Characteristic Stiffness and
damping constant were calculated and effectiveness of foam
was studied. Polyurethane foam was found to give best
suppression in vibration data for the selected avionics
package. A selection criterion was developed for choosing
appropriate foam for vibration isolation system. It was
proposed that foam with transmissibility less than 50% for
take-off vibration frequency and with a minimum ratio of
transmissibility and maximum transmissibility is best suited
for a vibration isolation system. The proposed criterion can
give more than 50% suppression in vibrations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to acknowledge and extend our heartfelt
gratitude to Dr. C. Venkateshan (Head, Aerospace Department,
IIT Kanpur) for his encouragement and support. We would also
like to thank the staff of Helicopter Lab and Structural Lab for
their assistance and concerns. We are also thankful to Robotics
club and Aeromodelling club of our institute for letting us use
their facilities.
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0 5 10 15 20 25
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
2
Frequency (Hz)
Transmissibility


Polyurethane
High Density
Memory Foam
Evlon
Rebond