Suppressing resonant vibrations using nonlinear springs and dampers

The energy entering the resonant region of a system can be significantly reduced by introducing designed nonlinearities into the system. The basic choice of the nonlinearity can be either a nonlinear spring element or a nonlinear damping element. A numerical algorithm to compute and compare the energy reduction produced by these two types of designed elements is proposed in this study. Analytical results are used to demonstrate the procedure. The numerical results indicate that the designed nonlinear damping element produces low levels of energy at the higher order harmonics and no bifurcations in the system output response. In contrast the nonlinear spring based designs induce significant energy at the harmonics and can produce bifurcation behaviour. The conclusions provide an important basis for the design of nonlinear materials and nonlinear engineering systems.