Key Contact: Neil Sims (Structural control) and Jem Rongong (Damping)
The group has a long history of research in damping technology, working closely with industry to develop and exploit new for damping materials and mechanisms. The main areas of expertise include viscoelastic polymers and composites, impact and particle dampers, air dampers, ceramic coatings and metal mesh materials.
New technologies developed and extended within the group in this area – like particle dampers and syntactic foam cavity dampers – have been successfully adopted by aerospace industry. In the area of structural control, the group has considerable expertise in piezoelectric actuation, shape memory alloys and electro- and magneto-rheological devices; applications include automotive and railway damping systems and biomechanical systems.
More recently, the use of `inerters’ forpassive vibration control has been investigated and novel vibration reduction techniques developed. The group also has expertise in active control applied to manufacturing processes and other dynamics applications, as well as hardware-in-the loop testing for a range of applications including earthquake engineering.