Article

Journal of Vibration and Control

2020, Vol. 0(0) 1–11

Analytical and experimental studies on © The Author(s) 2020

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particle damper used for tremor DOI: 10.1177/1077546320969469
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suppression
Zheng Lu1,2 and Zhikuang Huang1

Abstract
Tremor is an involuntary movement that makes many patients suffer, and passive absorbers used in wearable robot are
proved to be effective for tremor suppression. A particle damper is a kind of a passive vibration control device taking
advantage of energy dissipation and momentum exchange caused by particle collisions. To apply particle damping
technology in reducing tremor amplitude in the human hand, this study establishes a mechanical model of the particle
damper for tremor suppression and obtains its steady-state solutions under simplified tremor excitation. The accuracy of
steady-state solutions and the particle damper effectiveness in reducing tremor is validated by numerical simulations and
experimental studies. To further explore its damping mechanism, some important damper parameters are then analyzed. It
is shown that increasing the particle mass leads to an increase of the particle damper performance for tremor suppression,
but it has an upper limit. The provided damping of the particle damper becomes approximately independent of the tremor
frequency and the tremor amplitude within a certain range, which indicates that a particle damper with reasonable design
is suitable for tremor suppression.

Keywords
Particle damper, tremor suppression, steady-state solution, harmonic excitation, parametric study

1. Introduction
Tremor is an involuntary movement caused by Parkin-
son’s disease or other neurological diseases. Generally,
tremor is most likely to occur in hands and can be sim-
plified as harmonic excitation with a frequency range
between 2 and 12 Hz (Gillard et al., 2002). Medications
and deep brain stimulation, which are clinical treatments
against tremor, can threaten patient’s life with severe side
effects.
To relieve this problem, various wearable robots with
passive absorbers were designed for tremor suppression.
Constrained layer damping was a wearable system with
single degree of freedom which could reduce tremors of the
wrist by using viscous damping (Kotovsky and Rosen,
1998). A flexible metal plate could transform the rota-
tional motion of the wrist into the rectilinear motion of the
damper. Wearable orthosis for tremor assessment and
suppression provided an approach to reduce the upper limb
tremor in three degrees of freedom (Rocon et al., 2007a,
2007b). Gebai et al. (2018) compared the performance of
different types of passive absorber with a three-degree-of-
freedom upper limb model.
Wearable robots with passive absorbers have produced
significant reduction of tremor amplitude in previous
studies. Particle dampers, however, are not found being
applied to tremor suppression.
Particle damping technology is a passive vibration
control method taking advantage of momentum exchange
and energy dissipation caused by collisions between par-
ticles and the cavity walls. The particle damper has ad-
vantages such as simple construction (Chatterjee, 2008),
low cost (Gharib and Karkoub, 2017), robustness
(Dehghan-Niri et al., 2012), reliability (Afsharfard and
Kolahan, 2013), wide damping frequency band (Park
et al., 2009), and insensitivity to extreme temperatures
(Fowler et al., 2000).
Multiparticle collisions and the basic energy dissipation
mechanism of particle dampers bring great difficulties to
1
Department of Disaster Mitigation for Structures, Tongji University, China
2
State Key Laboratory of Disaster Reduction in Civil Engineering, Tongji
University, China
Received: 28 July 2020; accepted: 5 October 2020
Corresponding author:
Zhikuang Huang, Department of Disaster Mitigation for Structures, Tongji
University, Siping Road No. 1239, Shanghai 200092, China.
Email: 1932383@tongji.edu.cn
2 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)
obtain the analytical solutions of system response. Hence,
simplified analytical methods and numerical simulation
methods have been carried out by many scholars. Papalou
and Masri (1996) established an impact damper model with
one particle to study the multiparticle damper. Lu et al.
(2017) simplified the multiparticle as an equivalent particle
following certain rules in the case that the particles do not
accumulate. Yan et al. (2019) established a mechanical
model of the particle damper taking account of the rolling
friction effect.
This study establishes a mechanical model of the particle
damper attached to a human hand biomechanical model.
Multiple particles are simplified as an equivalent particle,
and the sliding friction is considered. Analytical solutions
for the steady-state motion of the particle damper under
harmonic tremor excitation are obtained by theoretical
analysis based on the hypothesis that there are two sym-
metric collisions per cycle. This is the first attempt to use
particle damping technology for tremor suppression, and
the effectiveness of the particle damper is validated. In
addition, it is of interest to evaluate the particle damper
performance in controlling the vibration of the human hand,
which has lighter damping and stiffness than traditional
structures. The performance of the particle damper in this
unusual case is studied by parameter analysis.
The contents of this study are arranged as follows:
Section 2 analyzes the human hand biomechanical model
and establishes a mechanical model of the particle damper
for tremor suppression. In Section 3, the discontinuous
impact process is theoretically analyzed to obtain the sol-
utions for the steady-state motion of the particle damper.
Section 4 validates the solutions for the steady-state motion
of the particle damper by a numerical simulation and ex-
perimental study. Section 5 analyzes the influence of some
important damper parameters to further evaluate its
damping mechanism in suppressing the hand tremor
movements.
2. Mechanical model of the particle
damper for tremor suppression
The motion of common tremors is similar to the sinusoidal
motion, and the frequency and amplitude of the severe
tremors are 3 Hz and 30° (Kotovsky and Rosen, 1998). The
torque produced by muscle Mt, which results in tremor in
parts of the human body, is expressed by equation (1)
Mt ¼ J  θ€ (1)
where J is the rotational inertia of the tremor part, θ is the
angular displacement of the tremor part, and θ€ is the angular
acceleration of the tremor part.
The motion curve of pathological tremor can be regarded
as sinusoid approximately, as shown in Figure 1 (Gillard
et al., 2002).
Figure 1. Angular displacement of the upper limb pathological
tremor.
Although the pathological tremor response has nonlinear
characteristics, it can be approximately regarded as a linear
second-order system in the case that a wearable tremor
suppression device is attached on the tremor hand because
lots of previous work showed that this approximation agrees
well with measured tremor data (Adelstein, 1981; Randall,
1973; Rocon et al., 2004; Timmer et al., 1998). Therefore,
the motion of a specific joint is expressed as follows
J θ€ þ C θ_ þ Kθ ¼ T sinðωt þ τÞ (2)
where C is the damping of the specific joint, K is the
stiffness of the specific joint, T is the maximum tremor
torque, ω is the tremor frequency, and θ_ is the angular
velocity of the tremor part.
For the design and manufacture of a wearable tremor
suppression orthosis which only allows flexion–extension
movement of the wrist, the tremor hand studied in this
article is regarded as a single-degree-of-freedom damped
and forced vibration system, and its stiffness coefficient is
negligible (Lehman and Calhoun, 1990). Tremor suppres-
sion can be realized by applying extra torque to the tremor
hand, which is provided by particle dampers in this study.
The addition of the damper can be treated by adding ex-
ternal damping to the biomechanical system from the
perspective of conceptual design. Considering the damping
coefficient of the human hand is much lower than the
damping coefficient provided by particle dampers, the
damping coefficient of the human hand is ignored, and
the equation of motion of the tremor hand is described as
J θ€ ¼ Mt  m (3)
where m is the resistant torque provided by dampers.
When the particles do not accumulate, an equivalent
particle can replace the multiparticle following certain rules
(Lu et al., 2018). This study focuses on obtaining the steady-
state solution of the tremor hand with the particle damper
under harmonic tremor excitation. The friction between the
Lu and Huang
Figure 2. Mechanical model of the particle damper for tremor suppression.
equivalent particle and the particle damper should be
considered, and it is assumed to be the sliding friction.
According to the above analysis of the human hand
biomechanical model and the particle damper, the me-
chanical model of the particle damper for tremor sup-
pression is established, as shown in Figure 2. The gear
transmission is designed to amplify the particle damper
cavity response for a better damping performance. In
Figure 2, d is the gap clearance in which the equivalent
particle is free to oscillate, r, r1, and r2 are the radii of the
corresponding gears, respectively, mp is the mass of the
equivalent particle, mc is the mass of the particle damper
cavity, k1 is the impact stiffness, c1 is the contact damping,
M(t) is the tremor torque, xc, x_c , and x€c are the displacement,
velocity, and acceleration of the particle damper, re-
spectively, and xp, x_p , and x€p are the displacement, velocity,
and acceleration of the equivalent particle, respectively.
3. Dynamic response of the particle
damper attached to the hand
In the first half-period, the equation of motion of the particle
damper, between two adjacent collisions, is
8 particle damper after the first collision, and xb is the particle
>
> J€θ ¼ M sinðωt þ τÞ  Fr
<
θr ¼ αxc
(4)
>
> αF ¼ mc x€c þ Fs
:
mp x€p ¼ Fs
where F is the tangential force between the first gear r and
the second gear r1, α ¼ r1 =r2 , M is the maximum tremor
torque, and Fs is the sliding friction
Fs ¼ μmp g (5)
where μ is the coefficient of sliding friction and g is the
gravity acceleration.
3
From equation (4), the solution of the particle damper is
8
>
> M =ω2 sinðωt þ τÞ  1=2Fs βt 2 þ C1 t þ C2
< xc ¼
B
(6)
>
> 1
: xp ¼ vt þ at 2
2
where C1, C2, and τ are unknown constants, t is time, v is
the initial velocity of the equivalent particle, a ¼ Fs =mp ,
β ¼ r=α, and B ¼ J =β þ mc β.
For steady-state motion with two collisions per cycle, if
the moment of one collision is assumed to be t = 0, then the
next collision will occur at t = π/ω. For the first half-period,
the moment of the first collision can be decomposed into
two moments, and they are the pre-collision time t = 0 and
the post-collision time t = 0+. Similarly, the moment of the
second collision in this period can also be decomposed into
the pre-collision time t = (π/ω) and the post-collision time
t = (π/ω)+. This type of motion can be represented in the
phase plane by a periodic process as shown in Figure 3
(Masri and Caughey, 1966).
As shown in Figure 3, x_b is the velocity of the particle
damper before the first collision, x_a is the velocity of the
damper displacement at the moment of the first collision.
The duration of the collision is very small than the period of
the excitation. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that at
t = 0+, the positions of the particle damper and the equiv-
alent particle remain the same, whereas their respective
absolute velocities are discontinuously changed (Masri and
Caughey, 1966). To satisfy the assumption of steady-state
motion, the displacement and velocity at t = (π/ω) should
be the negative of those at t = 0. At the moment imme-
diately following the collision, the absolute velocity of the
equivalent particle is denoted as v, and its value is assumed
to remain unchanged, whereas its velocity direction is
4 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)

8
< C1 ¼ ½ðAa  Ab ÞBv þ Fs βπ=ω=2
C ¼ ½ðAb  Aa ÞBvπ=ω=4 (11)
: 2
τ ¼ cos1 ðFxb þ GÞ

The corresponding parameters are described in Table 1.

With the value of C1, C2, and τ from equation (11), the
motion of the particle damper in the first half-period (0 ≤ t ≤
π/ω) is determined.
According to the above analysis, the motion of the
particle damper in the ith (i = 2, 3, 4, ...) half-period ((i 
1)π/ω ≤ t ≤ iπ/ω) can also be expressed as

M =ω2 sinðωt þ τðiÞÞ  1=2Fs βt 2 ð1Þiþ1

þ C1 ðiÞt þ C2 ðiÞ
xc ðiÞ ¼ (12)
B

τðiÞ, C1(i), and C2(i) can be obtained according to the

continuous displacement of the particle damper and mo-
mentum conservation equation at the collision process (Yan
et al., 2019). The solutions of τðiÞ, C1(i), and C2(i) are given
as follows
8  
>
> τðiÞ ¼ cos1 A  ð1Þiþ1 Fs βði  1Þπ=M  ði  1Þπ
>
>  
>
>
>
> C1 ðiÞ ¼ 2ð1Þi mp ωBðv þ aπ=ωÞ ½mc ði  1Þπ
>
Figure 3. Phase plane representation of the steady-state motion. < C2 ðiÞ ¼ xc ðði  1Þπ=ωÞ B þ M ω2 sinðði  1Þπ þ τðiÞÞ
>


>
> þ ð1Þ iþ1
F βði  1Þ2 π 2 2ω2
>
> s
opposite to the one immediately preceding the collision >
>  i
>
> A ¼  mc x_c ðði  1Þπ=ωÞ þ2mp ðv þ aπ=ωÞð1Þ
(Masri and Caughey, 1966). Therefore, the system should >
>
:  Bω=m M
satisfy the following conditions c

t ¼ 0 , xc ¼ xb , x_c ¼ x_b , x_p ¼ v (13)
(7)
t ¼ 0þ , xc ¼ xb , x_c ¼ x_a , x_p ¼ v
where xc ðði  1Þπ=ωÞ is the displacement of the particle
 damper preceding the first collision in the ith half-period,
t ¼ ðπ=ωÞ , xc ¼ xb , x_c ¼ x_b , x_p ¼ v þ πa=ω and x_c ðði  1Þπ=ωÞ is the velocity of the particle damper
t ¼ ðπ=ωÞþ , xc ¼ xb , x_c ¼ x_a , x_p ¼ v  πa=ω preceding the first collision in the ith half-period.
(8) Hence, the steady-state solution for the mechanical
model of the particle damper for tremor suppression is
Assume that the equivalent particle performs uniformly obtained.
accelerated motion from side to side. The absolute velocity
of the equivalent particle v is expressed as follows
ω aπ 4. Model verification
v ¼ ðd  2xb Þ  (9)
π 2ω
4.1. Numerical simulation
From the definition of the coefficient of restitution e and
To figure out if the steady-state solution for the mechanical
the momentum conservation equation during collision, we
model of the particle damper for tremor suppression does
have equation (10) as follows
have the characteristics as shown in Figure 3, cases 1–4 are

mc x_b  mp v ¼ mc x_a þ mp v chosen for the numerical simulation using the MATLAB
(10) programs, as shown in Table 2.
x_a  v ¼ eðx_b þ vÞ
Considering the interactions between the cavity walls
From equations (6)–(10), the expressions for C1, C2, and and the equivalent particle, the governing equation of the
τ are obtained as follows tremor suppression system is written as follows
Lu and Huang 5

Table 1. Parameters for equation (11).

pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
xb ¼ I ± I2  4HL=2H H ¼ D2 þ F 2 I ¼ 2ðDE þ FGÞ
L ¼ E2 þ G 2  1 D ¼ ððAb  Aa þ 2ÞB=2Þðω2 =MÞ E ¼ ððAa  Ab ÞB=4Þðd  ðaπ 2 =2ω2 ÞÞððω2 =MÞÞ
F ¼ ðAa þ Ab ÞBω =πM
2
Aa ¼ ðmc ð1  eÞ  2mp eÞ=mc ð1 þ eÞ Ab ¼ ðmc ð1  eÞ þ 2mp Þ=mc ð1 þ eÞ
G ¼ ððAa þ Ab ÞBÞ=2ððωd=πÞ  ðaπ=2ωÞÞðω=MÞ þ 1=2ðFs βπ=MÞ

Table 2. Parameters for numerical verification.

Case r (cm) r1 (cm) r2 (cm) d (cm) Jðkg  m2 Þ MðN  mÞ ω mc (g) mp (g) μ
1 2 1 1.5 1 4:48 × 103 2.80 11π 110 36.9 0.1
2 4 1 1.5 1 4:48 × 103 2.80 11π 110 49.2 0.1
3 2 1 1.5 2 4:48 × 103 2.80 11π 110 36.9 0.1
4 4 1 1.5 2 4:48 × 103 2.80 11π 110 49.2 0.1
Note: The values of parameters here are consistent with those in the following experiment. To make the differences between the four motion trajectories
more obvious, the radii of the first gear r in case 3 and case 4 are 4 cm, whereas the experimental ones are 2 cm.

8
>
>
> J θ€ ¼ M sinðωt þ τÞ  Fr where Mb is the body weight, mb is the mean correlation
>
< θr ¼ αx mass, L is the hand length, and R is the mean radius of
c
(14) rotation.
>
> αF ¼ mcx _  k1 GðyÞ
€c þ Fs  c1 Hðy,yÞ
>
>
Thus, from the above analysis, the rotational inertia of
: m x€ þ c Hðy,yÞ _ þ k1 GðyÞ ¼ Fs the adult male hand is
p p 1

where Hðy,yÞ _ and GðyÞ are nonlinear functions corre-
sponding to impact forces, and the relevant details can be
seen in (Lu et al., 2017).
Using the Runge–Kutta algorithm to solve equation (14),
the motion trajectories of the particle damper in four cases
are shown in Figure 4. The numerical results agree with the
periodic two collisions per cycle motion as shown in
Figure 3. Therefore, the solution does satisfy the assump-
tion mentioned above, and the theoretical analysis is val-
idated to be correct.
4.2. Tremor suppression experiment
Many researchers have studied the frequency and the
amplitude of tremors and found that the characteristic of
tremors varies depending on the patient situation. The
frequency and the amplitude of common tremors are shown
in Table 3.
Human dimensions of Chinese adults (GB10000-88)
provide 47 kinds of human dimension data for product
design, architectural design, and military industry (Wang
et al., 2006). Human dimensions related to this experiment
are shown in Table 4.
Leva (1996) gave the mean related mass and mean
turning radius of the human body, as shown in Table 5.
The rotational inertia of a part of the human body can be
described as follows
J ¼ ðMb  mb ÞðL  RÞ2
2
J ¼ ð75 kg × 0:61%Þ × ð0:196 m × 51:3%Þ
(16)
¼ 4:48 × 103 kg  m2
Figure 5 shows the tremor suppression experimental
device. In Figure 5, serial number 1 is mass block, number 2
is the cantilever, number 3 is the motor, number 4 is the
battery pack, number 5 is the third gear, number 6 is the
particle damper cavity, number 7 is the first gear, number 8
is the second gear, number 9 is the steel ball, and number 10
is the slide rail. The cantilever driven by the motor can
simulate the tremor of the human hand in single degree of
freedom, and it is connected with the particle damper by
gears and transmission shaft. The particle collisions can
dissipate the energy of the system and therefore realize the
tremor suppression.
The experimental device is made of LEGO Technic
Brick. The weight, the length, and the width of the particle
damper cavity are 45 g, 6 cm, and 3.5 cm, respectively. The
radius of the first gear, the second gear, and the third gear are
2 cm, 1 cm, and 1.5 cm, respectively. The particle damper
cavity can move freely on the slide rail, and its gap clearance
can be changed.
The tremor suppression experimental device can simu-
late the human hand tremor whose frequency and amplitude
are 5.5 Hz and 30°, respectively. The 10-mm diameter steel
ball is selected, and the mass of each steel ball is 4.1 g. A
horizontal acceleration sensor is attached to the particle
damper to obtain the acceleration response. Five sets of
(15) experiment cases are carried out for the verification of the
6 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)

Figure 4. Numerical simulation of the particle damper motion trajectory: (a) case 1; (b) case 2; (c) case 3; and (d) case 4.

Table 3. Frequency and amplitude of tremors. Table 4. Human dimensions.

Tremor type Frequency (Hz) Maximum amplitude (°) Measuring project Male Female
Essential tremor 5–8, 4–12 and 3–11 30 Height (mm) 1678 1754 1775 1570 1640 1659
Parkinson’s tremor 3–6 26 Weight (kg) 59 71 75 52 63 66
Cerebellar tremor 2–4 30 Hand length (mm) 183 193 196 171 180 183
Hand width (mm) 82 87 89 76 80 82

mechanical model. The particle damper parameters of each

case are shown in Table 6. Table 5. Parameters for male and female.
The comparison between the experimental results and Mean related Transverse Longitudinal
the theoretical results is shown in Figure 6. As can be seen, mass (%) Sagittal R (%) R (%) R (%)
the theoretical results agree well with the experimental
Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female
results, but the experimental frequency varies around 5.5 Hz
because of the unstable rotary speed of the motor applied in Hand 0.61 0.56 62.8 53.1 51.3 45.4 40.1 33.5
the experimental devices.
The relative error of peak acceleration between theoretical
results and experimental results is obtained for the quanti- agree with each other very well. The relative error of peak
tative analysis, as shown in Table 7. It can be seen that the acceleration is less than 11% in four cases. However, there is
vibration reduction ratio of peak acceleration is more than still a certain error. On the one hand, numerous factors can
20%, and the experimental results and theoretical results influence the experimental results, but the theoretical method
Lu and Huang 7

Figure 5. Tremor suppression experimental device: (a) lateral view; (b) vertical view; (c) simplified model 1; and (d) simplified model 2.

Table 6. Case parameters of simulating tremor suppression experiment.

Case Number of steel balls Total mass of steel balls (g) Additional mass ratio (%) Gap clearance (cm)
Case 0 0 0 0
Case 1 9 36.9 3.31 1
Case 2 12 49.2 4.41 1
Case 3 9 36.9 3.31 2
Case 4 12 49.2 4.41 2

cannot take account of all parameters. On the other hand, the
particle damper has strong nonlinearity even under the
harmonic excitation, and its damping mechanism is still
unclear. The mechanical model established in this study is
a simplified version. For instance, the interaction between the
particle and particle is not considered.
From the comparison between the experimental results
and the theoretical results, it is shown that the tremor
suppression system can be reasonably analyzed through the
mechanical model of the particle damper for tremor sup-
pression established in this study. However, the mechanical
model was validated under a limited condition. The ex-
periment to evaluate the effect of the frequency and the
amplitude on the damping performance will be conducted in
the future work.
The vibration reduction ratio
5. Parameter analysis
The mechanical model of the particle damper for tremor
suppression can be studied through the influence analysis of
the mass ratio, tremor amplitude, tremor frequency, and gap
clearance. As the standard parameters, the values of the
mass ratio, gap clearance, tremor frequency, and tremor
amplitude are 0.07, 0.01 m, 5.5 Hz, and 30°, respectively.
The mass ratio ranges from 0.000 to 0.080 with an interval
of 0.004 for the evaluation of the mass ratio effect. The gap
clearance ranges from 0.005 m to 0.050 m with an interval
of 0.005 m for the evaluation of the gap clearance effect.
The tremor frequency ranges from 4.5 Hz to 10.0 Hz with an
interval of 0.5 Hz for the evaluation of the tremor frequency
effect. The tremor amplitude ranges from 20° to 40° with an
interval of 5° for the evaluation of the tremor amplitude
effect. The vibration reduction ratio is shown in Figure 7
and it is described as follows
response without control–response with control
¼ ×100%
response without control
(17)
8 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)

Figure 6. Acceleration response of the experimental results and theoretical results. The left column is time history response, and the
right column is the corresponding acceleration amplitude spectrum: (a), (b) case 0; (c), (d) case 1; (e), (f) case 2; (g), (h) case 3; and (i), (j)
case 4.
Lu and Huang 9

Figure 6. Continued.

Table 7. Relative error of peak acceleration. the mass ratio is larger than 0.07, the efficiency of the in-
creasing mass ratio becomes very low.
Case Case 0 Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4 It can be seen from Figure 7(b) that the vibration re-
Experimental value 22.41 17.95 17.66 17.14 16.74 duction ratio of the tremor suppression system decreases as
(ms2) the gap clearance increases. The vibration reduction ratio
Theoretical value 23.15 18.64 18.61 18.62 18.57 becomes less than zero when the gap clearance is larger than
(ms2) 0.04 m, which means that the tremor is severer in these
Relative error (%) 3.30 3.84 5.38 8.63 10.93 cases. From the preliminary experiments, it can be found
that when the gap clearance is larger than a certain value, the
particles can hardly behave as a single equivalent particle
As shown in Figure 7, it describes the vibration reduction and collide with the cavity wall two times per cycle. In some
ratio of the tremor hand angular displacement affected by four cases, the collisions will not even occur at the cavity wall.
sets of parameters, which can represent the efficiency of the Hence, the actual damping ratio is very low, and the the-
tremor suppression system in different situations. According to oretical method is not applicable when the value of the gap
Figure 7(a), the vibration reduction ratio increases as the mass clearance is too large. When the value of the gap clearance
ratio of the particle increases. And the vibration reduction ratio approaches to zero, the particles tend to move together with
growth slows down as the mass ratio of the particle increases. the cavity walls. Therefore, the relative collision velocity is
The contact force produced by the collisions and the sliding close to zero. In this case, the energy dissipation and the
friction force both increase when the mass of particles become momentum exchange during the collision process decrease
larger, which indicates more energy dissipation and thus leads to a low level, which results in a low actual damping ratio.
to the increase of the vibration reduction ratio. However, when Hence, the theoretical method presented in this study is not
10
Figure 7. Vibration reduction ratio of different cases: (a) additional mass ratio of particles; (b) gap clearance of the particle damper
cavity; (c) tremor frequency; and (d) tremor amplitude.
recommended for the cases with very large or small gap
clearance. In these cases, the assumption that the particles
collide with the cavity walls twice per cycle is not satisfied.
As shown in Figure 7(c), the vibration reduction ratio
increases with the increase of the tremor frequency, and it
becomes flat when the frequency is larger than 7.5 Hz. It is
assumed that the tremor frequency is constant in the theo-
retical simulation. However, the actual tremor frequency of
the patients varies stochastically within a certain range. The
changing trend of the vibration reduction ratio influenced by
the tremor frequency indicates that the damping performance
of the particle damper changes slightly from 7 Hz to 10 Hz,
which is an important characteristic for tremor suppression.
It can be seen from Figure 7(d) that the vibration re-
duction ratio of the tremor suppression system increases as
the tremor amplitude increases. When the tremor amplitude
increases with a given frequency, the collisions become
more violent leading to the increase of the relative velocity,
as well as the contact force during collision process. Hence,
more energy dissipation is obtained, and the damping
performance of the particle damper increases.
According to the above analysis, it can be concluded that
the particle damper is effective for tremor suppression of the
human hand. It is believed that a particle damper with the
moderate gap clearance is more suitable for this kind of the
Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)
mechanical model, when the two-collision-per-cycle as-
sumption is satisfied. As long as the tremor frequency is
high enough, the vibration reduction ratio of the angular
displacement of the tremor hand becomes approximately
independent of the tremor frequency. When the tremor
frequency changes stochastically in the actual tremor cases,
the particle damper would have an acceptable damping
performance.
6. Conclusions
Based on the previous studies of particle dampers and tremor
suppression robots, this study established the mechanical
model of the particle damper for tremor suppression, and the
dynamic response of the particle damper is solved by the-
oretical analysis. The reasonability of the mechanical model
of the particle damper for tremor suppression is numerically
and experimentally verified. The parametric study is carried
out for better understanding the tremor suppression system
with the particle damper. After a series of analysis, several
conclusions are drawn as follows:
1. A mechanical model of the particle damper for tremor
suppression is established. Its steady-state solutions
are obtained and verified. The relative error of peak
Lu and Huang
acceleration between the experimental results and the
theoretical results is less than 11% in all cases.
2. From the parametric study, it is shown that increasing
the particle mass leads to an increase of the particle
damper performance for tremor suppression, but it has
an upper limit. When the tremor frequency is high
enough, the provided damping of the particle damper
becomes approximately independent of the tremor
frequency, which is an important characteristic for
tremor suppression.
3. The theoretical method presented in this study is not
recommended for the cases with very large or small
gap clearance of the particle damper cavity. In these
cases, the assumption that the particles collide with
the cavity walls twice per cycle is not satisfied.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This
work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China (51922080), Program of Shanghai Academic Research
Leader (20XD1423900), and the Fundamental Research Funds for
the Central Government Supported Universities (11080).
ORCID iDs
Zheng Lu  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2803-1496
Zhikuang Huang  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0235-5414
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