Patent ID: 8813604

Claim:
An apparatus for damping vibrations in an internal combustion engine, the apparatus comprising: a crankshaft comprising a lobe, the lobe comprising: a body; a flange coupled to the body, the flange having an opening therein; a pendulum having an opening therein; and a pin extending through the pendulum opening and the flange opening to pivotally couple the pendulum to the flange, the pendulum opening and the flange opening having a combined epicycloidal configuration defined by p 2 =p 0 2 λ 2 S 2 that lies on a continuum between a tautochronic configuration where λ equals λ e and a cycloidal configuration where λ equals 1, an epicycloidal configuration of the flange opening being rotated 180 degrees with respect to an epicycloidal configuration of the pendulum opening, where p 0 is a radius of curvature of a path corresponding to the pendulum apex, S is an arc length distance along the pendulum path from the apex, and λ e is the square root of the quantity n 2 over the sum n 2 +1, where n is a target order to be corrected.