Design for Vibration Isolation and Impact

This monograph deals with two important dynamic systems design problems: how to isolate elastically supported bodies from the effects of externally applied periodic excitation and determining equivalent static design loads for bodies that undergo sudden impact. The model used to investigate the isolation issue is a single degree of freedom system consisting of a mass connected by a linear weightless spring to a fixed base subjected to harmonic inputs. Two limiting cases are examined to address the issue of sudden impact. One model consists of elastic bodies that separate following collision with no loss of energy. The second model consists of inelastic bodies that remain fixed to one another following collision and energy is dissipated.

Carl F. Zorowski is R. J. Reynolds Professor Emeritus of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University. He attended Carnegie Mellon University receiving his doctorate in 1956. He taught at CMU until 1962 before joining North Carolina State University. His academic career at NCSU included teaching, research and administration serving as Head of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering. He was also cofounder and Director of the Integrated Manufacturing Systems Engineering Institute, an early interdisciplinary master's practice program at NCSU. His passion is classroom instruction, course content development and delivery methods that emphasize mathematical modeling and design performance analysis of mechanical systems. In 1993, he directed a five-year NSF funded Engineering Education Coalitions Program dedicated to revitalizing undergraduate engineering instruction that involved eight southeastern universities. Following retirement in 1997 he has offered graduate level courses in Mechanical Design Engineering in the College's distance education master's degree program. He is a fellow of the American Society of Engineering Education and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In 1999, he was awarded the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal by the NCSU Board of Trustees for outstanding carrier achievement and contribution to the university.