Figure 1.

5 calls our spring - mass system a ONE DEGREE OF FREEDOM SYSTEM

because the motion of the mass is described by only one displacement
measurement. (ie displacement is along one axis only)
The response diagram shows some important information that shall now be
considered. First, the mass has a response which theoretically goes to infinity
when the exciting force coincides in frequency with the natural frequency. This
response is known as RESONANCE.
In practice the response at resonance will not be infinite due to losses in other
parts of the system. However the resonant behaviour is significant because the
system responds with a greater displacement than that applied!
This is clearly undesirable.
It can also be seen that below the resonance frequency, the response climbs
steadily and is always more than the applied displacement. Above resonance
however, the response drops rapidly, showing less and less displacement with
increases in frequency.
How can this knowledge help us ?
If the frequency of the forced vibration is always above that of the NATURAL
FREQUENCY of the system, then the vibration of the mass is less than the
applied vibration. In fact, if the applied vibration is more than 3 times the
natural frequency, the vibration of the spring/mass is less than 10% of the input
vibration. This means that we have ISOLATED the mass from the vibration to
the extent that only 10% of the vibration gets to the mass.

A similar situation applies if the mass in our system has the forcing frequency
applied to it directly. Consider a small diesel engine. When operating, the
rotating and reciprocating parts of the engine will cause a vibration at the
running speed of the engine. In our simple model the engine is the mass and
provides also the forced vibration. We wish to isolate the vibration of the engine
from the mounting base of the engine.
If we use a spring mounting with a stiffness that ensures a NATURAL
FREQUENCY of 3 times less than that of the engine running frequency,
we will ISOLATE the mounting base of the engine from 90% of the
vibration produced by the engine.

Vibration Isolator
Installation: