LIVE Splash Guard for Stable Liquid-Gas Vibration Isolation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing vibration isolation systems for aircraft and helicopters face challenges in minimizing size, weight, and intermingling of liquid and gas working fluid components, particularly in reducing the mixing of these fluids which affects performance.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a liquid inertia vibration elimination (LIVE) system with a splash guard that prevents gas ingestion into the liquid and fluid escape into a gaseous internal space, utilizing a fluid path with a central port, interior reservoirs, and an accumulator with apertures and a platelike obstruction disc to manage fluid motion and maintain a distinct liquid-gas interface.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a liquid-gas interface is used in the vibration isolation system, then the system can achieve vibration attenuation through inertial forces, but liquid and gas fluids tend to mix which degrades performance
Solution Approach 1:
A splash guard is introduced as an intermediary component between the liquid and gas regions. This physical barrier prevents direct contact and mixing between the liquid working fluid and gas, while still allowing the system to maintain its liquid-gas interface configuration for vibration isolation operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The accumulator interior space is segmented into distinct liquid and gas regions by the splash guard. This segmentation maintains the functional benefits of having both liquid (for inertial vibration cancellation) and gas (for compliance and pressure regulation) while preventing their harmful mixing.
2Speed
If the system operates with high fluid velocity through the piston, then vibration isolation response is improved, but liquid can escape into gaseous internal space causing damper-like behavior
Solution Approach 1:
The splash guard acts as a physical intermediary that blocks the path by which liquid could escape into the gas-filled accumulator space. This prevents the development of damper-like behavior that would occur if liquid entered the gas region, thereby maintaining consistent isolation performance across different operating conditions.
3Volume of moving object
If the accumulator volume is reduced to minimize aircraft payload, then the system becomes more compact, but fluid mixing between liquid and gas phases increases
Solution Approach 1:
The splash guard is a compact component that fits within the accumulator interior space without significantly increasing external dimensions. It provides effective phase separation between liquid and gas, enabling the use of smaller accumulator volumes while maintaining fluid phase stability.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The LIVE system effectively reduces the mixing of liquid and gas fluids, enhancing vibration isolation by maintaining a stable liquid-gas interface and preventing undesirable damper-like behavior, thus improving the dynamic stiffness and performance of vibration isolation systems.
Implementation Method 1
a dense, low-viscosity fluid is used as the 'tuning' mass to counterbalance, or cancel, oscillating forces transmitted through the isolator. This isolator employs the principle that the acceleration of an oscillating mass is 180° out of phase with its displacement.
Implementation Method 2
the inertial characteristics of a dense, low-viscosity fluid, combined with a hydraulic advantage resulting from a piston arrangement, could harness the out-of-phase acceleration to generate counter-balancing forces to attenuate or cancel vibration.
Implementation Method 3
a splash guard disposed between a liquid transport orifice and a liquid-gas interface prevents gas from being ingested into liquid of the LIVE system from an accumulator as well as prevents fluid from escaping into an otherwise gaseous internal space of the accumulator.
Data Source
AI summary
An aircraft includes a frame, a transmission, and a liquid inertia vibration elimination (“LIVE”) system coupled between the frame and the transmission. The LIVE system is configured to attenuate communication of vibrations from the transmission to the frame. The LIVE system includes a first liquid zone, a second liquid zone, a plug at least partially segregating the first liquid zone from the second liquid zone, and the plug has an aperture in fluid communication with the first liquid zone and the second liquid zone. A splash guard is disposed within the second liquid zone and offset from the plug.