Active Vibration Isolation of a Diesel Generator in a Small Marine Vessel: An Experimental Study

An active vibration isolation system is retrofitted to a diesel generator set in a tugboat to determine the effectiveness of such a system in a realistic practical environment. The system consists of six bespoke inertial actuators chosen to make minimal modifications to the machinery arrangement, and a DSP-based controller. Six accelerometers are collocated with the actuators on the top of six isolators to act as error sensors, and six accelerometers are placed below the isolators to give a measure of the global vibration of the ships structure below the generator set. A hydrophone is also placed in the water to give an indication of the underwater noise due to the generator. The control strategy employed is six-input and six-output decentralized adaptive feedforward control with the reference signal being derived from the signal from an optical tachometer on shaft between the engine and the generator. To suppress the vibration at all the dominant forcing frequencies, an electrical circuit generated the half engine orders required from the measured reference signal. The experimental results show that the combination of the active control system and the passive isolators is effective in reducing the global vibration and the acoustic pressure at the hydrophone position.