Piezoelectric shunt damping of a circular saw blade with autonomous power supply for noise and vibration reduction

Circular saws are widespread tools for machining metal, wood or even ceramics. Due to the thin blade and excitation by the workpiece contact of the cutting edges, circular saws are prone to vibration and intense noise emission. Damping the blade will lower the hearing protection requirements of the users and possibly increase precision. Therefore a new damping concept for circular saw blades is presented in this paper. It is based on negative capacitance shunted piezoelectric transducers which are applied to the saw blade core. The required energy for the electronics is harvested from the rotation by a generator, so that no change of the machine tool is required. All components are integrated into an autonomous saw tool. Finally, the system is experimentally investigated without rotation, in idling and in cutting condition in a circular saw test stand in the Institute for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (IWF) at TU Braunschweig. The experimental investigation shows a good reduction of the vibration amplitude over a wide frequency range in the non-rotating condition. When rotating, the damping effect is lower and limited to some narrow frequency bands. The proposed reason for the reduced damping effect in rotating condition consists in the saturation of the electronic circuits due to the limited supply voltage capabilities.