ULTRA-QUIET PLATFORM FOR SDI SENSORS

Dynamic isolation of components and machinery is critical for many SDI and commercial applications. Vibration isolation using soft mounts leads to static misalignment, increased travel requirements, and decreased mount strength, often precluding this approach. The ideal isolator has high static (mount) stiffness, but low stiffness at disturbance frequencies. This SBIR will lead to a family of modern, two-axis "smart hardmounts," mounts with adaptively tuned dynamic compliance characteristics that also possess high static stiffness. These hardmounts will place "notches" in the mount's stiffness at disturbance frequencies, sense changes, and adjust these "notches" to maintain isolation. The "smart hardmounts" will provide solutions to commercial (equipment for making computer chips) and military (cryocoolers and control moment gyros in spacecraft) problems that need both "rigid" mounts and dynamic isolation, but cannot tolerate soft, nonprecision mounting.