Carpio, Gem Nikki S.

Department of Mechanical Engineering

College of Engineering, University of the Philippines Diliman

ME 143
MECHANICAL VIBRATIONS

LABORATORY EXPERIMENT No.2
ROTATING UNBALANCE
Introduction
Unbalance of mass is a common source of vibration in rotating machinery. A small
eccentricity in the distribution of mass can cause a significant vibration onto a system. In this
experiment, a spring-mass system will be analyzed in order to illustrate the effects of an
eccentric mass onto a system, find the damping ratio experimentally and compare it to the
theoretical values of the damping ratio.
Setup and Procedure
The setup to be analyzed is a spring-mass system composed of a rotating disk with a
diameter of 126mm and weight of 3.36kg, suspended on a pair of springs. The mass is
constrained to move vertically.
An accelerometer sensor was attached onto reciprocating mass; used to measure the
amplitude of the vibration of the reciprocating system. The sensor expresses the vibration in
terms of g units.
The first test was to determine the spring constant of the system. The spring displaced
13.5 mm under a loading of 2kg, giving a spring constant of 1453.33 N/m.
The first case was to measure the amplitude of vibration of the system with an eccentric
mass. The 88g mass was attached to the rotating disk at a distance of 17mm from the mass
center of the disk. It was allowed to reciprocate until a reading was taken.
The second case was to measure the amplitude of vibration of the setup rotating at the
same frequency, but with a 1.197 kg clamp was attached to the base of the system. This is to
illustrate the effect of an added mass to increase the total mass of the base.
The natural frequency is given by

. The vertical displacement due to the vibration was measured from the gradations on
the side of the rotating disk. The rotational frequency is then given by

Where X is the difference between the displacement rotating body with and
without the eccentric mass. The frequency ratio r is given by

The damping ratio was then found using the equation for rotating unbalance.

()

()

()

()

()

The damping coefficient was then found using the relationship
(

)
(

)
The following are the raw data and calculated values of the experiment:
Case k X m m
spring constant displacement eccentric mass mass of system
without eccentric mass 1453.333 0.0006 0.000 3.360
with eccentric mass 1453.333 0.0050 0.088 3.360
with e.m. and clamp 1453.333 0.0025 0.088 4.557

n r
natural frequency Rotational frequency frequency ratio
20.798 25.573 1.230
20.798 22.586 1.086
17.858 24.261 1.359

A e c
amplitude (acc) eccentricity damping ratio damping coeff.
0.392 0.000 0.208 29.097
2.551 0.080 0.212 29.633
1.472 0.080 0.282 45.844
The same calculation was done using the rotational frequency reading from the
accelerometer, =27 (rad/s) and the resulting damping ratios were compared.
error^2
damping ratio
(theoretical)
damping ratio

- - -
0.212 0.152 0.158
0.282 0.311 0.009

Discussion
The system appears to behave according to the theory of rotating unbalances. As the
mass of the base is increased, the natural frequency of the system increased while the
amplitude of the vibration is decreased. The damping ratio of the case with the clamp is similar
to that of the first case, with a small amount of error.
However, the damping ratio still has 15.8 percent error compared to the theoretical
case where the given frequency was 27 rad/s. Possible sources of error can be the inadequacy
of the ruler as the measuring device for the displacement of the reciprocating body. Another
source could be the assumption that the clamp was a point force added to the base; in this
case, it was not, as it was attached to one corner of the base.