Experimental Study of the Vibration Reducing Performance of Metal Rubber Isolators

Metal rubber (MR) isolator is made of twined metal wires through molding and pressing. It has several advantages such as efficient to reduce the vibration, easy to shape, lighter in weight and convenient to change stiffness. For these reasons, it has prospective applications in warships. Based on the method to calculate the elasticity modulus of a circular isolator, average stiffness is approximately computed from by consideri ng the hysteresis loop of metal rubber. The derived formula to compute the elastic modulus for a circular isolator of metal rubber is verified through tests. Besides, the influence of the parameters of the metal rubber isolator on the vibration reducing performance is studied experimentally, and some useful conclusions are drawn.