Beneficial effects of antisymmetric nonlinear damping with application to energy harvesting and vibration isolation under general inputs

Beneficial effects of nonlinear damping on energy harvesting and vibration isolation under harmonic inputs have been investigated showing that the introduction of nonlinear damping can increase the harvested energy and reduce the vibration over both the resonant and higher frequency ranges. However, the scenario becomes more complicated when the loading inputs are of more general form such as multi-tone and random inputs, which can produce system responses that are induced by an interaction of system input components of different frequencies. In the present study, by introducing the concept of power transmissibility, the study of the beneficial effects of nonlinear damping is extended to the systems subject to general inputs including both multi-tone and random inputs. A rigorous analysis is conducted based on single degree of freedom systems subject to general inputs. The analysis reveals the conditions under which the antisymmetric nonlinear damping is beneficial for improving energy harvester performance and reducing of the power of system output in vibration isolation. Moreover, the beneficial effects are demonstrated by two case studies.