Implementation of inerter-based dynamic vibration absorber for chatter suppression

Chatter is one of the major issues that cause undesirable effects limiting machining productivity. Passive control devices, such as tuned mass dampers (TMDs), have been widely employed to increase machining stability by suppressing chatter. More recently, inerter-based devices have been developed for a wide variety of engineering vibration mitigation applications. However, no experimental study for the application of inerters to the machining stability problem has yet been conducted. This paper presents an implementation of an inerter-based dynamic vibration absorber (IDVA) to the problem of chatter stability, for the first time. For this, it employs the IDVA with a pivoted-bar inerter developed in [1] to mitigate the chatter effect under cutting forces in milling. Due to the nature of machining stability, the optimal design parameters for the IDVA are numerically obtained by considering the real part of the frequency response function (FRF) which enables the absolute stability limit in a single degree-of-freedom (SDOF) to be maximised for a milling operation. Chatter performance is experimentally validated through milling trials using the prototype IDVA and a flexible workpiece. The experimental results show that the IDVA provides more than 15% improvement in the absolute stability limit compared to a classical TMD.